Your Taillight is Hanging Down

One Saturday afternoon, several years ago, my husband walked into our house, asking me to look at his foot to see if I thought he should go to the ER. Now mind you, said foot was still inside his tennis shoe, which had been cut open by a chainsaw.  That newly vented tennis shoe was oozing blood.

I looked at him wide-eyed, trying to keep from freaking out, and said, “Yes, you definitely need to go to the emergency room,” my voice raised a few octaves, as I practically pushed my husband into our car, while trying to remain calm.  

Several hours later, and with one ER visit under our belt, my husband returned home with a large bandage on his foot, and a ruined tennis shoe.

As panicked as I felt in that moment, I actually managed to keep it together pretty well.  I didn’t want my fear to become my husband’s, especially in knowing that although blood in itself doesn’t bother him, seeing his own, does. I could have freaked out, but I didn’t because of my concern for my husband.  

I have come to realize that fear is transferrable. If you’ve ever seen a non-reactive child, start crying, responding only when they see someone else react in panic, then you can understand. I’ve been on both sides of that scenario, but I can honestly say that it’s instinctive for me to keep others from freaking out. However, when I see my normally 99.9% of the time calm husband show any sense of concern on his face, or in his voice, I can go from zero to a hundred in panic mode. That was exactly what happened a few weekends ago.

“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” (2 Timothy 1:7)

I suppose I had the love part down, but the fear and self-control part for me, not so much.  My husband and I had decided to drive to our local Sam’s Club to buy a pallet of mulch to do some landscaping around our house. I watched as the forklift operator eased that tower of shrink-wrapped mulch down into the bed of my husband’s beater truck.

According to google, a beater truck is an older, high-mileage pickup that is highly reliable for utilitarian tasks, but has little to no cosmetic value, allowing the owner to use it without fear of dents, scratches, or wear. Yep, that certainly describes my husband’s truck. It was built for a time such as this, and so I wasn’t too concerned when the weight of that mulch momentarily caused the truck to lurch forward, as the forklift released that load of mulch.  My concern was in the height of that mulch tower, which overshadowed the cab of my husband’s truck by several feet.   

“You think we should go interstate,” I nervously asked my husband, not certain how that tower would react to the force of air associated with the speed limit on interstate.

“It’ll be fine,” he calmly told me, and then added, “just keep an eye on it.”

“Why? Do you think it will tip over?” I couldn’t hide the alarm in my voice.

“No, I don’t think it will tip over, I just want to make sure that it doesn’t,” my husband ended by saying. That of course made no logical sense to me because if he didn’t think it wouldn’t tip over then why did he want me to keep an eye on it, making sure that it didn’t? Here is where fear started kicking in for me.

And so there I was, shifted sideways in my seat, staring back at a tower of mulch, certain that at any time it was going to topple over.

“Why can’t we just strap it to the truck? You always strap everything else,” I didn’t wait for my husband to reply.  “We should have gone the back way home,” I finished, intent on making a point.

“You don’t need to watch it,” my husband’s voice remained calm, almost sympathetic for the fear he’d managed to create in me, “it will be fine.” At that point, his suggestion to not watch the mulch was meaningless because now I couldn’t look away from it, convinced that it was going to fall over. This is where self-control left me.

“It’s shifting,” my harried words assailed my husband with their panicked tone, causing him to pull off to the side of interstate and check the load. 

It wasn’t actually shifting, according to my husband, but I was convinced that I’d seen it moving. “Swaying,” according to him was okay, “falling over was not.”  It wasn’t falling over.

“You can relax,” my husband said, “If it was going to fall over, it would have by now,” he finished, no doubt regretting that he’d ever asked me to keep an eye on the mulch in the first place.

Unfortunately, within minutes of him telling me that everything was okay, and where I’d reached a point of being able to relax from my mulch watching duties, my husband calmly said, “A bag must have torn open.”

“What do you mean,” my voice held very little calm in it, as I turned to see whatever it was that my husband was seeing.  I saw nothing, but what he apparently saw in his rearview mirror was pieces of mulch fluttering into the open air behind our truck.  Thankfully we were near an off-ramp, and so instead of pulling over, my husband decided to exit the interstate. All the while, I am thinking, “we should have done that to begin with,” but I kept quiet as I watched my husband climb into the bed of the truck, and not long after getting back into the cab.

Apparently, one of the bags of mulch had managed to come loose, and had fallen onto the hitch of my husband’s truck, causing it to bust open, and sending mulch into the air. With one less bag of mulch than when this adventure had started, my husband got back onto interstate, sending a rippled shockwave throughout my body.

“What are you doing,” I asked him, certain he’d lost his mind, and exhaling a gush of frustration from my mouth, upset that he still wasn’t going to go the back way home.

“It will be fine,” he assured me calmly for the umpteenth time, but now with just a slight hint of irritation in his voice. 

And it was fine for a few miles, and then it happened, my 99.9% always calm husband muttered under his breath, “Oh.”

One look at the unnerved expression on his face, and I yelled out, “WHAT!”

Fearful of turning around (as if that was going to change whatever was happening from happening), I screamed, “WHAT’S WRONG!”

As it turned out, the shrink wrap had started flailing around like an inflatable tube man at a used car lot, and bags of mulch were starting to lift into the air.  Thankfully, my husband spied those bags before they broke loose and went air-born.  So there on the side of interstate (stop number three) my husband started taking bags of mulch from the top of the tower and throwing them into the bed of his truck. 

“If you would have listened to me, we would have been home by now,” I whispered from inside the truck cab, as I watched him deconstruct the tower of mulch, bag by bag. Finally, jumping down from the bed of the truck, I observed him messing with the taillight. Apparently, it had broken loose somehow, and was hanging by a thread of wires.

My concern over mulch had finally alleviated, but now I was worried about a taillight breaking free, and once my husband started speeding his way up interstate, that’s exactly what happened.

“The taillight is hanging down,” I told my husband void of any patience.

“I’ll fix it when we get home,” he said calmly, the tone of his voice instructing me that he didn’t want to hear whatever it was that I was planning on saying next.  

This is where my theory that fear and emotions are transferrable comes in to play.  I could tell that my husband’s mood had deteriorated considerably, as we excited interstate and headed home, but not before he stopped one final time in an empty parking lot, to momentarily fix his taillight again. Unfortunately, within a few blocks, it popped out for the third time, and was hanging by the wires. 

“I see it,” my husband said, sensing what I was about to tell him. It was just about that time when we pulled up to a red light, and a man from the sidewalk yelled, “Your taillight is hanging down.”

“Yeh, I know,” my husband’s voice remained calm, but sharp, as he waved his thanks, smiling through gritted teeth.

In that moment, you could say that I felt the metaphoric gentle tap of the Holy Spirit on my shoulder, reminding me that if I trusted God then I had to trust Him in all circumstances, including those times when I didn’t trust my husband’s judgement to take interstate, over the back way home.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1:2-4)

“Life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it.”  I need to remember that the next time my husband decides to put a tower of mulch in his beater truck, and take interstate home.