My car is a ‘vintage plum’ 2000 Honda Civic EX. I really like it. My favorite part about it is that it is paid for.
Bumper scrape from 2000 just after I bought my first new car.
Jay and I had a really rough time with cars the first year we were married. There was actually one week where my poor little Honda Accord was totaled and Jay’s Toyota Tercell just died. So, in one week we both had to go buy new cars. The Honda dealership REALLY liked us…especially when Jay’s new Civic was totaled and he had to get another one.
The point of all of that back information is to say that I truly believe that Satan tries to get to me through our cars. The first time this became evident to me was when I was backing out of a parking place in my brand new civic and I scraped the front bumper on one of the cement support pillars in the parking garage. I threw my car into park, jumped out and ran around the front to see a horrible scar on my brand new bumper. I was fuming. How could I have done this!? I slowly walked back to my car and got in the driver’s seat and then I started to laugh. Who cares?! It’s just a car. It was a material possession that was going to get hit by shopping carts in the grocery store parking lot, not to mention being hit with car doors. It was then that I decided that it just didn’t matter. Not that I didn’t want to take care of my vehicle but that minor dents and dings were going to happen.
Big ding from 2005
Fast-forward to 4 years ago. Jay and I had just moved to Conway, SC where I had begun a new ministry position. I attended a “Lenten Luncheon” at one of the local churches. The parking lot was pretty small so I had to do some creative parking. After the luncheon was over I returned to my car to see that someone had backed right into the side of it. Again, I was fuming. How could someone who was obviously a Christian (I assumed this since I was at a church function) back into my car and not leave a note?! Then it hit me…who cares?! It’s a material possession that still works. My dad later helped me hammer out the majority of the dent from the inside of the trunk. It’s not a professional fix, but it’s worked fine all these years. (The picture was taken today– so the dent was much worse.)
A little front bumper love from my husband's car in 2009.
Last night was the most recent chapter in Satan working on me through my car. Jay has been so wonderful through this whole change in ministry and overly supportive and helpful during the process of support-raising. Last night he was making a run to the post office to drop off the last of the prayer/announcement letters and he backed right into my car. He came in and was obviously upset about it. This time I was not fuming at all. I had caught on to Satan and his tricks involving getting me irate over my car. There was no way that during this time of growing closer to God and to Jay that I was going to allow Satan to have a foothold on me and my emotions. There wasn’t even a second that I was even slightly upset about it. I didn’t even care if we got it fixed…however we now know that it’s going to need to be repaired on some level because part of it scrapes on my tire if I go over bumps in the road. We don’t have the money to fix it, but I am not even going to worry about it because I know that God supplies for our needs and if this is something that really needs to be taken care of then God will provide.
UPDATE: My dad was able to pull out the part that was rubbing on my tire. It’s not pretty, but it’s not a problem anymore!
Picking Up Sand 