The last time I wrote, it was to tell you about our run-in, literally, with a piece of angle iron. Little did I know that the angle iron incident would still be causing us problems a week later! Of course, we never heard back from the doctor…I honestly don’t think I ever expected him to call but a part of me was hoping that he would be true to his word, so although I wasn’t disappointed in one respect, I was terribly disappointed in another.
I told Jim again that I was fine with the scratch on the windshield…it is a tangible reminder that God knows we’re here. And truthfully, it didn’t bother me a bit that the tail fin piece was no longer on the car, although I knew it was bothering Jim. As I said earlier…battle scars. Somehow, such cosmetics don’t seem to be nearly as important to me here as they once did there. It’s just another thing to draw attention and I would kind of like a little more inconspicuousness in the car department. The rest of the this has my husband's stamp of approval...he's very supportive of me even to the point he will let me tell a story on him! I love that man!
Monday night, Jim was doing some repair work under the hood…even though we had just paid to have work done at the mechanics, of course, it still needed tweaking. Jim’s a great tweaker. As a matter of fact, he loves tweaking. But sometimes, a tweaker aficionado doesn’t know when to quit and they tweak just a tad too much. I’m starting to believe that there should be made available some kind of tweaker restraints for those who might have a little problem with knowing their tweaking limitations. Thank goodness, Jim doesn’t fall in to that category…yet.
He was trying to get the car ready for the next morning’s early hour trip of 4:30 to take Roger, Rhonda and the kids to the airport for their annual trip back to the States. He finished the under-the-hood repairs and was in the process of getting the interior of the car ready for the additional passengers. Since the back end of the car was going to be necessary for transporting luggage, he took out the broken off tail fin…that’s when the need to tweak escalated to the next level…he would put the fin back on himself.
All seemed to be going well and Jim finished the job in short order. He messed with the a/c a bit in hopes of tweaking it in to action, but that was to no avail. Not even twisting and turning fuses helped with that. No matter…hopefully, the a/c wouldn’t be necessary at 4:30 in the morning.
Sometime later, the car alarm sounded. Now, at this point, I need to say that the four cats that we feed on a regular basis, who I keep claiming are not our cats, often play around on the car, including climbing up in the engine compartment and on the spare tire which rides under the car’s chassis. When they get really active, they can occasionally make the car alarm chirp. But this was not a chirp. This was the car alarm going off.
That alone is an unnerving sound, but couple that with the fact that our guard hadn’t shown up for work and that had been a lot of new faces recently behind us with the new squatter’s moving in…well, it made for both of us moving around pretty quickly. Jim turned on the outside lights and went out to the car to investigate. I turned on the outside lights on the other side of the house. There were no signs of any intruders – two legged or four legged. Jim began checking out the car while I tried to get my heart rate back down to normal…this past year’s break-in has sometimes made me a bit jumpy, I’m afraid.
He discovered that the dashboard panel indicated that a door was left open. So he systematically went around the car, opening and closing each door…over and over again. The indicator light wouldn’t go off and all of a sudden, the interior light was on and wouldn’t go off. Jim knew that everything was working fine (with the exception of the a/c which hasn’t worked for awhile now) before he reattached the tail fin. With almost gleeful delight, he announced he would have to take the tail fin off again and see if perhaps, he pinched a wire. I think he just likes the sound of his drill…
After a good long while, I realized that taking the fin off was taking a lot longer than putting it on had taken. I went to investigate and saw that dreadful look plastered across my husband’s face as he had his hands tangled in a spaghetti-mess of wires…the look that is brought on by a tweaking-gone-bad. I asked him what was wrong. With such remorse, he told me that when he had reattached the tail fin, the screw had gone into the wad of wires and shorted out the electrical system. Not only did we not have a/c, we didn’t have any rear lights with the exception of our flashers. And he apologized profusely.
I think he thought I would be upset. How could I be upset with him? There has always been something about a broken confession that has touched my heart…probably because I’ve had to do it so many times before myself. I’m sure that has to be the low point for a tweaker…confessing that something in the tweaking went wrong and that not only did the thing that needed tweaked, not get tweaked, but rather, would now need the touch of a professional. That moment of realization usually brings on a lengthy, eye-glazing explanation of what should have worked…but didn’t, which is usually followed by a barrage of remarks insulting one’s own intelligence. Such self-abasement begs immediate forgiveness, don’t you think? It’s also the only thing that kept me from choking him at that moment. (Okay, not really, but it sounds good.)
To shorten up the story a bit, the trip to the airport early the next morning was made in Roger and Rhonda’s car while I stayed home since the guard never did show up that night. As Jim was getting in their car, I heard Roger say that they had lost their rear license plate when they had made a trip up to the north part of the country a few weeks prior. I had planned on going back to bed after they left, but I was worried that Jim would be stopped driving a vehicle with a missing license plate, so I spent those early morning hours praying for his safe return. Once again, God was gracious to us and Jim returned home, safe and sound…and in record time for a trip to the airport and back. Obviously, there’s not much traffic out at such an early hour.
Later that day at Los Cedros, David asked about us driving a different car and Jim told him the story, going clear back to the angle iron impact. Since Jim’s classes were through, David drove him back to our house to pick up our car to go to David’s mechanic. That was Tuesday and our car is still there. We’re not exactly prisoners in our home but neither do we feel free to be out and about with a car that’s not ours and is missing a license plate…somehow that whole story just smacks of being too much to try to explain to an opportunist wearing a blue uniform.
Driving to Los Cedros isn’t so much of a worry as it’s in a rural area. There are frequent police stops there but Tuesday, they already had another vehicle pulled over so we were able to drive by without being stopped. Thursday, school was cancelled as there was a death in the community, so we didn’t have to worry about driving out to Los Cedros again. But the rest of our “life” away from home here tends to take place in the heart of the city, where there are great numbers of men in blue. As a result, we’ve missed seeing Miguel all week…and we have no way of getting hold of him to explain why. The church doesn’t have a phone and neither does Miguel. Hopefully, we’ll be back on track for next week.
My “schedule” says we need to be getting things done. We need to be at Miguel’s. We need to get groceries bought and we need to get copies made. We need to get errands done and bills paid. But even with that sense of urgency that constantly is trying to surface, there’s a greater sense that God’s timing trumps my schedule. And I think that all this “down time” this week is not to be taken lightly or blown off as time wasted. I have been able to spend some time back in my Spanish studies plus more importantly, getting back in to one of my Bible studies that I had been neglecting as I thought all the other issues were more pressing. How foolish.
Jim’s tweaking has provided some income for someone else at a time when many people are in desperate need of work, plus made for a situation where my “not doing” has provided me time with God I wouldn’t have taken otherwise. Isn't that how it goes? My husband's tweaking turns in to a teaching for me. I love my handy-man.
Well, we just got a call from David and our car won’t be ready until Tuesday. I want to sigh and say, “that’s just great…”…but I don’t mean it…I want to do it sarcastically. The reality is, it is great…I just don’t yet see why it is. My plans say otherwise.
You know how we often think trusting God means that we need to listen to His counsel regarding the “big thing” before us? I think sometimes that’s easier than trusting Him in the little, mundane things in life…like we’ll get our car back when it’s His time for us to have it instead of when I think we need it…like maybe spending time at home is His better plan for us this week than my good plan of being out and about doing the things I think need to be done.
How many times have I asked God to speak to me? Well, He is. I accuse Jim of being a tweaker, but in reality, I think we’re all tweakers to some degree. We just have different areas where we think we’re qualified to tweak. Jim wants to tinker and tweak mechanical stuff…I want to tweak people and plans. I can easily convince myself that my opinions, my direction, my timing, my plans have to be right and that anything that might interrupt or interfere with those must be wrong. Ouch. I have to acknowledge that is a very arrogant attitude to live clothed in. Ouch, ouch.
God is gently whispering to me I need to be thankful for the countless number of times that He has saved me from my own tweaking, my own planning, my own agenda…all those times that people didn’t do what I thought they should do when I wanted them to do it, all those plans that went awry, all those schedules that never were completed, all those “hiccups” that happen just in daily living…thank you, Lord. Thank you for reminding me that you are sovereign over all things…including my plans. I guess I’ll go study some more verb tenses...
Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails. Proverbs 19:21
1 comment:
Hi. I'm Mandy and I too am a tweaker. Ouch. I thought you said confession was good for the soul?
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