Blinded by flat tires

As I sit here next to my snoozing husband on the living room floor to worked up to sleep and to tired to clean more, I decided to materialize my thoughts of the past couple weeks and these past couple days especially. It has been a subject that has surfaces multiple times in many different areas in my life... with various friends, facebook, church, work, etc. Each and every one of the situations is completly different but connected by this one question. Why does God let bad things happen to good people? This alone I have found is the main reason for atheism and a number one reason for anybody to feel like they are not loved by their Father in Heaven... me included. (Not that those feelings last but a lickety split second, but I am a person... natural man of sorts.) I have been wondering why I haven't been seeing many tender mercies or feeling very blessed these past few days. On Sunday I realized I was supposed to do a play group that I had signed up to do at least a month ago... Ten oclock on Sunday night after arriving home from visiting my parents a friend reminded me that I had... House was a disaster. I proceeded to stay up til 2:30 to clean that morning. Playgroup was fun, house was cleaner... and I still had time to go get some work done. As I pull out of the place where we buy our bark, I notice my tire with four distinct sides and flat as a board. Great, I thought. Just then a truck full of a father and son pulled up and they offered to help. But, I had no spare and I was going to have to buy a new tire which meant dropping my trailer and getting the tire and finally at 9pm that night we were able to head back out and put the tire back on and drag the trailer home. Oh and just after I got home the missionaries show up and they are ready to put their food in the fridge/lunch area we said the could have downstairs... which was still completely full of our storage and food storage. Three hungry babies were clinging to me crying for food and the missionaries wanted to clean up downstairs? ahhh! They moved things around and tidied up a bit. I thought, this is my good dead for the day... tomorrow should go better.
So today I wake up with a "this is going to be a productive day" feeling and then all of a sudden as we are working I get the phone call. The truck is broke down on the freeway and won't start. We are down to only this one truck for our business and depend entirely on it for all of our work abilities. If that truck goes we are in trouble. As we get the truck towed we discover he is going to charge us $100 for towing the trailer with the truck... Not going to happen. Can't afford that. James did some quick thinking and just down the road is his friend's car dealership. He asked a favor and all of a sudden we are loaded up in a new truck pulling our trailer home. On a good note also we were able to get to reffing volleyball and driving school bus and have the kids dropped off and it all worked out. Now after being up working all day James has a paper due tomorrow and cannot for the life of him keep his eyes open. I feel guilty because he is exhausted and is working hard so I highlight his reading assignment according to the different questions he has... I show it to him and he can muster a thanks and back to sleep it is. Which brings me to the past hour of me cleaning the house trying to get adrenaline out of my head to be able to sleep and I wonder... why is this so hard? I know exactly what the scriptures say, we are given trials so that we are made to remember Him and repent and be humble. But I thought I had been remembering Him and trying harder to be more like Christ. Obviously not because sitting here now writing this down I see that really when these past couple days have been "challenging" I have not been alone at all and in fact have been swarming in tender mercies. Starting with the friend that reminded me of the playgroup being at my house... imagine everyone showing up to play and I am not here and I my house is not enterable? The kind men that helped me take my tire off and attempted to fit the truck spare on. Being able to go home and play with my kids at the playground. Having a husband that works hard and can change a tire like a pro. The truck not blowing a motor or being totaled. Having kind people in our path to lend us a truck from there lot to save us a dollar. Having a whistle at the gym waiting ready for me once I realized I had forgotten mine. Having such loving and kind and considerate people that I can trust to watch my kids. Be able to have my husband study and finish his degrees. I had missed all these little tender mercies because I was focusing on the negative and was blinded. I don't really have a specific answer to why bad things happen to good people, but I know that good stuff never stops happening either to good people. You just have to choose what you are going to focus on and see. I might dive further into this with other stories but I am finally feeling grateful and would like to go to bed on that feeling!