Thursday, September 22, 2011

Cosmetic damage? It could be worse.

On Tuesday evening, I received a bit of a nudge from God.

First, a tiny bit of background. Last weekend, we drove down to my brother's house in Sierra Vista to spend time with his family. On Sunday, as we were driving between Phoenix and Tucson, we ran over a tire in the middle of the freeway. The car in front of us swerved to miss it but they waited until the last minute and we didn't have enough time to react. We ran right over it.

I ignored and intentionally forgot to check for damage for two days. On Tuesday evening, we needed to run some errands so I checked the front end of the car. Under the headlight, the front end is smashed. It's ugly. I was really upset about it but knew we wouldn't do anything about it since it was obvious it was just cosmetic.

Our first errand was to get gas. I was stewing over the car, crying about the loss in value, our $500 deductible, and how ugly the car is now. After getting gas, we tried to start the car. Click. Click. Click. Dead.

A very nice gentleman gave us a jump start and we headed over to Pep Boys. As we were also due for an oil change, we asked them to include that in the list for the evening. $195 later, we have new oil and a new car battery.

The lesson in all of this? It's not worth getting upset about something that doesn't truly matter. It's just a car. If it runs, if it gets my husband to his client appointments, who cares what it looks like? If it's reliable, does some cosmetic damage really matter? It could be worse. We could have no car at all! We are blessed to have a reliable car and I need to remember to thank God for providing it, warts and all.

5 comments:

Sarah said...

I agree! I refuse to worry about a car that's bigger, brighter or "better". I mean, if it can take me from point A to B, that's all I need.

Citizen Atheist said...

God provided the car? I thought your husband had a job... maybe I misread the post.

Unknown said...

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Missie said...

hugs sweetie...sorry!

Cassandra said...

Sarah, agreed! :)

Citizen Atheist, maybe a better way to put it would be - God provided a job. We were both laid off within 6 weeks of each other but hubby found an even better job than the one that let him go. That allowed us to pay off the car and sock some money into savings.

Thanks, Missie!