Lessons Learned

This 4-day weekend started out not so great (hint: the not so great-ness was due to my seemingly never ending car frustrations.) I'll explain.

It all started Wednesday night. As I was driving home from church I noticed that in addition to my check-engine light being on as usual, my emergency break and battery lights were also on. At first I thought that maybe I was driving with the e-break on, but quickly discovered that that wasn't the case. Thankfully, I made it home safely, and drove my car the next day just fine as well, although the lights stayed on. So, when I got home from work on Thursday night I told the padres about the light, and one of them (who shall remain unnamed) was quite worried and wanted me to stop driving it until it could be checked out.

I didn't have to work on Friday, so my mom and I drove it to Jiffylube to see if the guys there could check the lights the same way they do a check-engine light test (something my Thursday night Bible study leader suggested.) The man there quickly hooked a little machine to something under the hood (I'm not even going to attempt to act like I know a thing about cars here, so bear with me) and told me that my battery was not charging and that I needed a new alternater. He recommended that I take it to a mechanic just a couple blocks away, and he gave me the business card for the mechanic which had a discount coupon on the back.

We drove right over there and explained what the man from Jiffylube had said, and the mechanic immediately got on the phone to see if he could get the part he needed. He was able to find the part right away, and he told us that not only would they repair my car the same day (Friday afternoon of Labor Day weekend!), but that it would only take about an hour. The whole thing ended up costing me more than I wanted to spend (aka more than $0), but with the coupon from the business card, I ended up saving $50.

Ok, confession time: I most certainly would not have been this calm and matter of fact in re-telling the story had I been asked about all of this as it was happening. In fact, I was rather angry and grumpy about it all (I mean, I did just have my tires slashed 3 weeks ago, and my dad graciously paid for new tires after that, and I did just have the whole rubbermaid tub on the freeway incident a couple months ago, not to mention the sliding onto the curb because of black ice ordeal a few months before that, or the whole gas pedal not working when the a/c runs dealio from a couple summers ago...) But regardless of all of those incidents, I shouldn't have gotten so frustrated and irritated that God would allow this to happen (hey, you'd think I'd be used to car troubles by now) but I'm ashamed to say I most certainly did.

However, God is good and can use times like those to teach us a lesson or two. My lessons were in mercy, humility, and trust--mercy, as I was reminded that "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8)...what an amazing thing!!; humility, as I realized how wrong it was for me to be so grumpy and mad; and trust, as I saw that, even in the midst of my car troubles and pity parties, God was working the whole thing out for good. He got me safely to a mechanic that was able to fix my car, one that worked quickly on a holiday weekend, and even gave me a discount.

I can't say that I'll never have another pity party or get frustrated when God's not doing what I think He should do, because I am still a sinful human. But I can say that I'm thankful for His forgiveness and compassion towards me when I do make mistakes. I will certainly be working on trusting Him with everything. I want to trust Him when things are going well and when things aren't going the way I'd like them to. But that's what's hard, isn't it? It's not difficult to trust Him when everything is just peachy and life's a breeze. It's when your car needs to go to a mechanic for the 3rd time in 8 months that you start to think, Hey, God, I thought we had an understanding here? I trust You, and You allow "all things to work together for good." This certainly isn't good! What's going on? But I'm learning that going through hard times is a good thing when they remind us that God is in control (not us!), and that He's a merciful, trustworthy God.

And, since I still have my car, I'm guessing that God is going to give me another chance at trusting him in tough times in the near future! But next time I'm gonna remember the lessons learned this time.