I am sure you have heard the old expression, “when it rains it pours.” Well, I for one would buy stock in that expression, considering the last several weeks of my life.
Drip, drip, drip, the raindrops started.
First, my car (just shy of three years old) began making a ticking sound whenever I accelerated. Now for anyone who has a husband, I am sure you can relate to what I am about to say next. As soon as he got home, I told him about the sound. The conversation went something like this . . .
Me: “I think there is something wrong with the car.”
Him: With a steady look of doubt on his face, he asked me what the problem was.
Now he may or may not have accentuated the word “problem”, but he’s used to me hearing all kinds of rattles, ticks and noises being omitted from our vehicles and so to him I might seem a tad oversensitive to what he would deem to be “normal” car noises. Implying perhaps that I might be a bit paranoid when it comes to our cars.
I assure you that I am not paranoid and when I say that I am usually 99.9% right when it comes to abnormal car sounds, I am being dead serious! Can I get an AMEN from all those ladies who know exactly what I am talking about. As is normally the case, those noises somehow magically seem to disappear whenever our husbands get behind the wheel. Hence the often look of doubt whenever I tell my husband that my car has an issue. For all you skeptics out there, this is a real phenomenon, unlike big foot sightings. Not to make light of anyone who believes in big foot, but I have actual proof of this car phenomena thing.
Noises in my car are like a whistle to a dog’s ears for me. My husband however doesn’t seem to be on that same frequency, enabling him to hear whatever it is I am hearing. However, this time, he actually heard the sound.
For several months, prior to that ticking sound, I’d told him that there was something else wrong with our car. The best explanation that I could give him was how loud it seemed; loud enough that the sound of my radio wouldn’t even drown out the annoying unexplainable noise. Unfortunately, mine and my husband’s definition of what was loud differed greatly and so what was driving me to the point of constant complaining, didn’t seem to bother him at all. Again, my car was purchased brand new just a few years prior; it still had a warranty on it. Not only that, the car I’d purchased was known for being one of the most reliable cars on the road and yet I knew there was something wrong with it.
Finally, it was our niece who managed to convince my husband that maybe there was a problem. From her seat in the back of our car, she loudly asked, “Why is your car so loud!”
My husband is very close to our niece and so she seemed to be able to convince him of what I seemed unable to do. To my husband’s credit, I really am supersensitive to noises in our cars. To my credit, again, I am usually 99.9 % right in knowing when something is wrong with our vehicles.
As it stood, my car needed a repair that was covered under warranty. However, just a few weeks later was when I started to hear that ticking sound. Given that my husband had overlooked the original complaint of my car being so loud, he felt perhaps, that just maybe, my new complaint was warranted. It was, a small part had been inadvertently broken off during the first repair. That tiny broken piece had gone inside the engine, requiring that the engine be removed to retrieve it. Fortunately, that too was going to be covered under warranty. With the second repair also behind us, I was back to driving my car again and back to finding issues with it. The car shook so badly when idling that I could actually feel my seat shaking whenever I was at a traffic light. Ugh!
With yet another complaint to my husband, he called the dealership, scheduling a time for me to take the car in. After sitting in the customer service area for barely a half hour, I was told that the idling was normal and that it was because of the cold weather. Now this was a time when I teetered on wanting to be a good Christian and wanting to upset a chair in the waiting room. I knew what I knew and the idling issue had nothing to do with the cold. Feeling dismissed and not wanting to appear like an overly emotional female, I left the dealership knowing that my husband would take care of it.
My knight in shining armor didn’t seem to take too kindly to other men thinking that his wife was crazy. That was a thought reserved specifically for him. Wink, wink. My husband was not happy when he learned of how easily the idling problem had been dismissed, especially since he was fully aware of the problem himself. Now when my husband notices a problem, there is a problem! And so it was, back to the dealership and alas, the idle problem was finally recognized by the mechanics. Again, our engine would need removed (again, all covered under warranty). In knowing that the new repair would take several weeks, we were given a loaner car, which turned out to be a new model with less than five hundred miles on it. I remember that feeling of vindication as the dealership’s manger handed the loaner car keys over to me, eagerly assuring me that no one had meant to dismiss the idling issue when I’d brought the car in earlier. In laymen terms, they were sorry for acting as if a woman didn’t know what she was talking about. As much as I wanted to tell them that I am 99.9% right when it comes to knowing if something is wrong with my car, I graciously thanked them and took the keys to my loaner.
Once home and pulling that new car into my garage, I’d decided that since my husband drove further distances than me, that he should drive the loaner and that I should drive his truck. After all, the dealership had instructed me that there was no limit to the miles that I could put on the car. The only requirement on my part was to bring it back with the same amount of gas in the tank from when I left their lot. My theory was simple enough, why put miles on my husband’s truck when he could use the loaner car, which had better gas mileage. Since I drove shorter distances, I would drive my husband’s truck and so that was what we did. For those who’ve read my earlier posts, here is another example of a God incidence.
On one particular morning, I’d decided to drop off the perishable strawberries that my sister had purchased off my nephew for his FFA class. Both my sister and I are very early risers and so I wanted to drop off her berries basically at the crack of dawn, and get back home to prepare for a 10:00 a.m. meeting that I had scheduled. I grabbed the loaner car keys off the counter, replacing them with my husband’s truck keys. I knew that I had bible study that evening and because I always picked up an elderly lady for that class, I knew that she would have trouble climbing into my husband’s truck.
When my husband saw his truck keys on our counter, he said something to the effect that he thought he was going to take the loaner car that day to work. Realizing that he’d be home before I left for bible study that evening, I switched keys with him, not giving it a second thought. Now, that switching of keys was definitely a God incidence because while traveling back from my sister’s house, I hit a deer. Actually, the deer ran smack into the right front fender of my husband’s truck. There was absolutely no avoiding it. I caught a glimpse of that deer as it leaped into the air, before slamming into my husband’s truck. The thud it made seemed gentle, nothing what I expected hitting a deer would be like. I hadn’t even really felt the impact and as I hurriedly looked into my rearview mirror, the disappearance of that deer left me with the hope that perhaps he’d escaped severe injury.
With a quick phone call to my husband, in order to alert him that I’d just hit a deer, the calmness in my voice gave him the impression that I was joking. Regardless of how calm I appeared; I certainly wasn’t joking. When I asked my husband if I should pull over to the side of the road to look at the damage, he told me that he preferred that I drive straight home instead. Given the early hours (just before sun up and because it was raining), my husband didn’t want me out on the road alone, fearing that I’d end up getting hit myself. After questioning me if the truck seemed to be driving okay and whether or not a check engine light had come on (it hadn’t), he wanted me to drive home. I was approximately ten minutes away at that point and so I did as my husband instructed. Every once in awhile I’d hear a slight scraping sound, but other then that everything seemed to be fine.
As I pulled into our garage, I feared looking at whatever damage had been caused to my husband’s truck. Worse, I feared seeing the remains of a deer, somehow convincing myself that had been what the scraping sound was, deer parts. It wasn’t, it was part of the fender, rubbing against the tire. With my husband on the phone, I walked cautiously around his truck to inspect the damage. Let’s just say that little thud caused quite a bit. Although it didn’t look as bad as I’d anticipated, cost wise it ended up being more than either of us would have expected. Now when I say that this whole scenario was a God incidence, I mean just that. Had I been driving the very small loaner car; things could have been much worse. The impact of that deer may have very well caused me to wreck and given that the loaner car was covered under our insurance; we would have been paying a deductible for the repairs of a car that didn’t even belong to us.
When it rains, it pours. A few days later, with a loaner car still intact, I was working in my kitchen. As I walked to the sink, I felt a difference in the floor beneath me. It seemed warped. Sliding one of my socked feet across the floor, I tried figuring out what was wrong. Something definitely seemed off because my foot caught on one of the laminate floor pieces, but why it was warped made no sense. The floor was completely dry. Knowing that we’d just built our house five years prior, the floor being warped seemed quite implausible and so I dismissed it. I did however tell my husband that the floor seemed off somehow. He actually agreed with me, but that was as far as the conversation had gone until a few days later when my barely five-year-old dishwasher stopped working. Upon my husband pulling it from its place between my kitchen cabinets, we realized that it had leaked underneath my laminate flooring.
Drip, drip, drip . . . first, my car, then my husband’s truck and now my dishwasher. Seriously, was satan on full-time attack mode or what? We hadn’t purchased the extended warranty on my Maytag dishwasher. It was the first Maytag I’d ever owned and given those Maytag repairman commercials I’d often seen, I thought I was making the right choice. To repair that barely five-year-old dishwasher was going to cost me over $500.00 and I’d only paid $800.00 for it. Ugh! After a few weeks of handwashing dishes, my husband was begging me to go pick out a dishwasher. Yes, I am spoiled, I own a dishwasher and no, I did not like going back to those days before I owned one. With that said, my husband kept asking me to please decide on a new dishwasher. Perhaps it was the site of all those drying dishes spread out on a towel across our countertop that kept him pleading with me to get a new one.
Now mind you there was a reason behind what he saw as madness for me wanting to wait to buy a new dishwasher. I simply didn’t trust which brand to choose. After all, my first experience with a Maytag had been a failure and my first time owning the make and model of the car I’d purchased had also been a failure. Subsequently, to date, that car is still in the shop and we are still driving the loaner car whose miles now is well above its original five hundred.
I had found myself anxiously longing for the days when a product lasted beyond their one year warranties. Those times when you actually didn’t need to buy an extended warranty because those products were so well made. I missed honest companies that stood behind their products and didn’t charge you the cost of a new product to repair the old one. In short, I missed what I deemed to be, human decency by doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do.
Finally, after much pleading from my husband, I finally chose a dishwasher, barely $100 more than it would have cost me to repair my old one. The new dishwasher ended up being another brand that I’d never used before, but had extensively researched before buying. As if that made a difference. You could say that I was developing quite a skeptical attitude from the seemingly continual drip, drip, drip of rain in my life.
With my new dishwasher installed by my husband, I waited a few days before attempting to wipe clean the fingerprints from the fingerprint free dishwasher. I tried Windex, I tried stainless steel cleaner, I tried water and then started the whole process over again. Ugh and ugh again, the fingerprints were still there, added next to the streaks from the non-streaking Windex.
Now these are those moments when God will remind you of how a Christian should be reacting to such situations. As I am finding myself upset by streaks on my dishwasher, upset by products that are poorly made and companies that take advantage of their customers; the grievances started piling up in my head.
“Seriously,” I heard my conscience cry out. “You have a dishwasher and there are people who don’t even have dishes!” My conscience was not letting up. “You have a home, you not only have a loaner car, you and your husband are blessed with three vehicles.” That third vehicle is a gas guzzling beater truck. To those who are unaware of what a “beater” truck is, it’s a vehicle whose glory days are long gone. It’s a truck that you really don’t care what happens to it because the only reason you keep it around is to do those things that you wouldn’t dare think of doing in your nicer vehicles. When I say beater truck, I mean it. My husband’s, once caught on fire as he worked for nearly ten minutes trying to maneuver a trailer, loaded down with wood up a muddy hill. The fire had occurred due to a newly fresh oil coating to protect his old truck from rusting further. I watched as he extinguished the flames with a fire extinguisher and then kept on working as if a truck catching on fire was an every-day thing for him. That old Chevy was definitely built at a time when vehicles were meant to last, withstanding a fire and still making it up that mud slicked hill with a loaded down trailer attached to its hitch. If only my car could withstand a leisurely drive down interstate.
Now that you are up to speed on what a beater truck is, back to my conscience. God was convicting me big time, reminding me the reason why we can’t put our faith into things.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)
It was after that very much needed, but loving conviction from God that I realized why the fingerprints and streaks were not coming off my dishwasher. It was being protected by a thin layer of plastic that I’d neglected to remove, unaware that it was even there.
Quite the humbling experience and a reminder that as a Christian, no matter how many times we try to remove the stains from our own life, it is impossible. We are blemished, imperfect and yet we have a protective layer around us, the love of God. It’s our choice to recognize that its there. You either trust that God is protecting you, or you don’t. It really is that plain and simple.
So, the next time you find yourself complaining, as I found myself complaining over a dishwasher, remember that Christ died for you, for me, for all of us. Remember too that things are simply that, things, and focusing on Jesus and God’s love for us is all that really matters. After all, it’s the only thing with a warranty that is guaranteed for life. Everything else will simply break down, rust and fade away, including us. Now where you spend eternity is up to you. You can either end up on a pile of old broken-down things that are decaying away or you can find yourself new again, still going like my husband’s old beater truck. The only difference being, we’ll have a whole new body without any fear of it breaking down. As far as catching on fire like my husband’s old truck once did, I guess that happening to you, depends on your choice of where you want to spend eternity. Fire pun intended. As for me, I would like to personally thank God for protecting me even when I am not always aware that He is . . .