Got stress?

Image from: http://www.lemonlaw.com/images/Lemon-of-the-Week/vandoor1.jpg

This isn't my car, but it is what happened with it. Mine is now back in one piece, hopefully to stay.

Got Stress?

Did you ever have one of those days?  Well, I’ve had one of those weeks…years? Last week, I had my oldest daughter drive me to pick up her sister at a school function because I have trouble seeing to drive at night.  We were pulled over by an officer on the way back…because our front headlight had stopped functioning!  “Are you aware that one of your headlights is out?”  No, we were not aware, of course. Since my daughter had been driving, she was upset, but we repaired it quickly to satisfy the ticket.  (That thing must have just gone out THAT NIGHT. Couldn’t we have simply gotten a warning instead of a ticket?  My daughter was driving beautifully, and it’s not even her car. Oh, well.)  Yesterday, one week later, I was waiting in the car loop to pick up my three eldest daughters from school musical practice.  They’re down to the final stretch, with long rehearsals almost every day.  I can’t wait to see the show, especially since having three kids in it will be awesome for me as a mom.  My oldest daughter is under a lot of stress, being a senior with many obligations besides her major role in a musical for the first time ever.  We live way up north with no garage.  Almost every winter, our one “automatic” door on our minivan refuses to open partway through the winter, because ice, snow, and rock salt work their way under a rubber bumper-thing right behind the sliding door, loosening it enough to obstruct the door.  We just had it reglued last spring, but Winter was persistent.  After a long day of school and rehearsal, my three daughters rushed through the snow and icy wind to the shelter of our car.  Finding the sliding door on the curb side refusing to open, my oldest daughter quickly ran to the other side, yanking the non-automatic door open roughly in frustration.  Well, the door broke!  I mean, it ripped off its upper hinge-slidy-thing, which we found when we tried to close it.  I leaped out of my seat, grabbing the door before it ended up lying in the car loop while the daughter nearest the inside tried to help me reattach it.  Embarrassingly, not all of the cars had left the loop, so here I was, out in the cold wind with my hair flying, wrestling with a car door, crying,  “Oh, NO!  I don’t know what to DO!  I don’t know what to DO! I can’t BELIEVE this!”  while another daughter attempted cheerfulness: “Don’t worry, Mom, it’s just the car.  I think I can hold it closed! We don’t need money!” (Actually, my dear, unfortunately, we do, but we wouldn’t have it at this point, and for the only vehicle that fits the whole family.)  Astronomically-huge car repair bills looming on my mind, I finally got the door MOSTLY closed, enough that there wouldn’t be danger of its taking the daughter inside with it into some farmer’s field, and tried to at least get it home.  I say MOSTLY closed, as in latched but not sealed enough to silence an annoying buzzing alarm.  Our drive home was accompanied by both my and my understandably-mortified oldest daughter’s apologetic tears, the buzzing “door is ajar” alarm, my other daughter’s SINGING (she thought it would help drown out the alarm), and my third daughter’s eventual, “Please.  Please stop singing.  Really, I can’t stand it.  Please stop.”  Tears quietly streaming down my face, something struck me as hilarious partway home, and I couldn’t help but start to giggle at the same time I was crying.  I thought, now THIS would be the perfect time in Atrocious-Land to be pulled over by a cop.  “Maam, are you aware that your CAR DOOR is falling off?”  :P  Well, we arrived home safely, after which I really was able to get the door completely back into its groove—without a car repairman.  My oldest daughter helped, and we finally got everything working so that awful buzzer finally turned off.  She has learned to be extra-careful when she is frustrated, even though it was an accident.  I take it as a lesson also:  it’s so easy to forget and just slam or yank something when we’re upset.  I think that everyone in that car will think twice before reacting to frustration the next time it comes.  I thank God for the release of tears and laughter.  Stress comes on like a tidal wave sometimes, and it relieves the heart to cry, and even more so to laugh, especially at yourself.  What a picture I must have made in that car loop in my puffy coat, like some sort of Banshee Michelin Dough-Boy creature, trying to hold my car together with my desperate small hands!  I thank God for helping me to eventually do what I thought was impossible.  I was literally blinded by stress (plus it was dark), and it wasn’t until the tidal wave subsided that I could see (or breathe) clearly enough to fix the problem.  Sometimes you have to let that awful wave hit you and roll along with its punch until you can get your head above water enough to see solutions if there are any.  You have to step back a bit from the situation to change the situation (and in my case see how funny it looks.) God doesn’t prevent you from getting hit by Life’s tidal waves, but He is the Great Lifesaver.  Grab onto His promises, and He will sustain you through the storms, and sometimes scrape you off the floor, bedraggled and dripping-wet, but still His imperfect and dearly-loved child.  There are many things we simply can’t endure without breaking, but there is no problem God can’t handle, and He knows our breaking points.  He fixes what we think is impossible, including us when we go to pieces, and instead of sending us the ultimate repair bill, He already paid the ultimate price, to give us the ultimate gift of eternal life with Him.