Michelle and I have a lot of car troubles. Take these posts for example: The Day My Car Panicked, The Day My Car Stopped Moving. There has been a few more instances apart from those, but if I wrote about my car every time something bad happened, this blog would just be car stories!
This car story is special, however, because much of it was our own fault.
The Blowout
Michelle and I wake up early on Fridays to pray with our friends Sean and, when she is not at work, his wife Erica. We pray for our church, our friends, each other, the government, the city, world missions, and more. It's really enjoyable. If you aren't part of a group that gets together and prays, find some friends and try it out! It's my favorite morning of the week.
Michelle always leaves early because she has to get to work at a specific time. Sean and I, as is our custom, hang out chatting. While we are chatting, I get a call from Michelle. Her tire has blown out on the highway! Thankfully she did not lose control. She is on the side of the highway and needs me to put on a donut.
I pull up behind her. Her car is in the grass, and I keep mine on the shoulder to be a buffer from the death machines speeding by. I then see another car pull up further behind me...Sean has taken time out of his morning to use his car as an extra layer of protection for us! That is extremely kind of him. I'm not sure everybody would consider their car and their time more valuable than my life. At least not to the degree to which Sean showed.
Feeling safe with a double buffer of cars, I decide to change the tire on the side of the road. Oh the joy of touching freezing metal without gloves. It's difficult to be precise when your hands are shaking non-stop. Despite the difficulties, I manage to put the tire back on. All cars safe and sound, we go our separate ways.
The Battery
I take Michelle's car to Robertson's Tire to get fixed and get it to my office without further problems. Michelle wants to pick up her car because she plans to go to Stillwater to teach at the BCM, and she likes her car more than mine. She's somehow turned off by the occasional strange noises sounding near the giant dent in the back of my car...
That's one of those car stories I didn't take the time to tell on this blog.
She arrives, and we spend way too long chatting. Finally, we pray for her time teaching, we say goodbye, she gets in her car, and I start heading back.
Until she yells, "You left the lights on!"...Oops.
Her car does not ding at me when I get out of the car and leave the lights on. This is the third time this has happened. Thankfully, my car is equipped with all the necessities for jumping a car. I've begged the help of many a stranger in my car's lifetime using those tools. We get the tools, I pull up next to her, and we prepare to jump the car.
As I look at the red and black cable, I think, "Is left positive or negative...? Hmm... Well, 50/50 odds!" I then hook up to Michelle's battery. Michelle's car and my car respond to their first touch the same way Michelle and I did ourselves: sparks flew! In this case, however, that isn't a good thing. I fix the connection, start my car, and she starts hers. We are back in action!
The Battery Part Two
We laugh about my silly mistakes with the headlights and the sparks as I put away the jumper cables. When I finish, we once again say our goodbyes. I get in my car to pull away, and I hear her say, "My car won't start!"
"Your car won't start?! What do you mean? We just started it!" "Well," she responds, "I turned it off, and I can't get it started again." I ask, "Why did you turn it off?!" She answers, "I didn't want you to get hurt when you were unplugging the cables!"
Ah...right. I respond the only way a person can when pure confusion suddenly collapses into understanding: I burst into laughter.
For those who don't know, I'll explain my understanding of this issue. For mechanically minded people, please forgive any mistakes. The car charges its own battery while it is on. Jumping the car uses the other car's battery for help, but it still needs charged some on its own after it has started. So when she turned it off, the battery was still dead.
After we hooked everything back up, no sparks this time, we discovered that the battery was in fact more dead. We had to wait a good ten minutes with the cables set up to get hers to start up again.
We enjoyed our ten minutes relaxing in the car, however. We were able to sit and relax with each other before Michelle rushed off to do her teaching. When it finally started again, we say goodbye, and she successfully drives off to Stillwater!
Conclusion
Days can get stressful when everything goes wrong. Days can be even more stressful when we are pressed for time. However, because my wife was awesome, she had a great attitude throughout this situation! She didn't get upset at either of my major mistakes. We got to spend good time together, and we had some great laughs!
Michelle and I will remember this story for years, and I will find great joy in retelling it. However, if Michelle or I had let stress or frustration take control, this story would have been memorable for a very different reason. Great attitudes can change situations. Grace for mistakes along with the ability to laugh at ourselves and with each other turn mishaps from embarrassing memories to hilarious stories.
I get frustrated at situations way more than I should. Whether it's nobody's fault, like the blowout, my fault, like the lights and the cables, or another person's fault, like Michelle turning off the car, it's so easy to be focused on what we think needs to be happening as opposed to what is happening. But James' reminds us that our plans can change anytime:
Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit" - yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
James 4:13-17(ESV)
We don't know what each moment will bring. Instead of insisting our plans are the best and being infuriated when our plans fail, we should follow the old Proverb: "Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established." (Prov. 16:3, ESV). When we are committed to the Lord, any time our plans change, we trust in the sovereignty of our Lord Jesus and look to see what He is doing. Maybe He is just giving us an opportunity to spend extra time with the love of our life, or maybe He is providing an opportunity to tell others more about what He has done for us and for them.
Whatever Jesus may be doing, commit your work to Him, and enjoy the ride.
See you next time!