Victory!

Yesterday was a Red-Letter Day in my young adulthood.

If cooking a meal is a monumental occasion for a bachelor, handling car trouble has to be an equivalent for a bachelorette. While I like to consider myself a fairly independent woman, I have to confess that car knowledge has been somewhat of an elusive enigma to me.

I first came to grips with this several months ago when some male co-workers alerted me to the fact that my back tire looked like it needed some air. I stopped at the gas station after church and pulled up to the "Air" machine thinking, "How hard can it be?!?" After a good 15 minutes of wiggling the air hose around to the place where even I now thought my tire looked flat, I was stumped and frustrated. At that moment another male motorist pulled up next to my car, obviously wanting to use the air machine as well. Our conversation went something as follows:

Man: "Is there a problem here?"

Me: "It's all right. You go ahead. I'm not sure what's wrong."

Man: "Well, what are you trying to do?"

Me: "I'm just trying to fill my tire up with air, and it looks like there's something wrong with the machine, or maybe my tire."

Man: (Glancing at the tire and air machine) "Well, did you turn it on?"

Me: "There's an 'on switch'?!?"

With an expression of both shock and pity, the man graciously offered to fill up the tire for me, and I was happy to let him. My skills were not again tested until yesterday when I went to go to a Christmas party only to realize that I left a light on in my car and it was completely dead. Fortunately, I received jumper cables as a Christmas present last year, and although I noted excitedly that they came in a cute carrying case, I really didn't pay much more attention to them until yesterday. My mom came to help me and knowing her to be a Renaissance woman in every other area of her life, I figured that she knew how to jump a car. Turns out that she's not much of a Mrs. Goodbody either. So, we turned to a solution that would make any warm-blooded male cringe with disdain.

We read the owners manual.

After a good 15 minutes of looking at diagrams, trying to match up "doohickeys" in the picture with "thingamajiggies" in the actual hood of the car, I was a little nervous that I could potentially blow the car up, but pretty confident that we were good to go. I took a big breath, turned the key . . . nothing. Completely dead. Not a sound. We were ready to throw in the towel when I had a sudden flashback to 11th grade physics.

The pretty red positive cable was connected to the pretty red positive sign on each engine, but I realized that it would be very difficult for a charge to go through the pretty red plastic to which I had connected it. Low and behold, the plastic was a cover that you're supposed to lift up and connect the cable under it. Those sneaky car designers!!! Once the problem was corrected, it was only a turn of the key before my pretty car was running better than ever. You could almost hear, "I am woman, hear me roar" off in the distance as my mom and I proudly smiled.

As I drove, trying to categorize all my new auto knowledge into some sort of permanent place in my mind, God used it as an opportunity to remind me of an important spiritual Truth. It didn't matter how hard I tried to wiggle the air hose or jiggle the jumper cables or turn the key of my car. In the case of my battery, I had to be correctly connected to the source, and in the case of my tire, even when I was correctly connected, it didn't do me any good until I allowed the power to come through the connection.

Too often, I'll be running through my day, checking things off my personal agenda, getting projects done, even doing ministry without taking the time to connect to my Heavenly Father. When I don't stop and ask Him to direct my agenda, ask Him to guide my steps, my day is started with an inherently incorrect connection that cannot be sustained. And when I don't take the time to clear my heart and mind, to repent, to allow His Spirit to move freely throughout my whole being, it's as if I'm trying to blow up a tire without turning on the switch. I need His power to carry me through each day, whether I realize it all the time or not.

Victory was sweet yesterday, but I pray that it was only the beginning of even more significant victories to come.