I'm in a rental car for a couple of weeks. Our daughter's car is in the shop to be repaired after an accident late last year (not her fault). While the body shop is working on it, the other driver’s insurance company is providing us with a rental car. Because she's not old enough to drive the rental car, I get to drive it while she drives my car. It always takes a while to get used to a new car. All the things that you can do without thinking about in a car that are familiar require time and attention. I have to think about where a button is, or search for the controls to adjust the mirrors. I'm sitting at least a good foot lower to the ground than in my normal car, which makes everything look and feel different as well.

The rental car is not bad. It's only a year or so old, but I was surprised to see how many dings, dents, and scratches it has. There's a dent on the front hood, a dent in the driver’s door, and a dent on the trunk lid. There are deep scratches across the front hood, down the rear bumper, on the trunk lid, on the roof, and on several of the quarter panels, too. It's unusual in a rental. I don't really mind because my own car, which is 14 years old now, has plenty of scratches and dings of its own!

Driving the rental car back from the hospital visit, I was thinking about how there are moments in life that cause us to see everything in a new way. The familiar disappears, and we have to find new ways to do things. What we used to do without thinking, or out of a comfortable sense of routine, we now have to expend energy thinking about. It may be as the result of the illness, retirement, the birth of a child, the loss of a loved one, an injury, or any number of things, really. Once we have experienced it, it takes a while to create a new normal, or a new routine. Some things become familiar after initially feeling foreign, and some things will never be comfortable in the way that they were.

For most of us, we do adjust to things that are often outside our control. Sometimes we give up that control kicking and screaming, and at other times we are pragmatic enough to know we don't have a choice. Sometimes it isn't worth getting too upset about. We may be annoyed, easily frustrated at times, or harbor long resentment for the changes as they come, but in time they simply just become a part of us.

We go through life collecting dings and dents, scrapes, and bumps. We get a little dingy, and maybe we find a way to polish ourselves up for a while, but we all get that “lived in” appearance just from the days passing on the calendar. We also come to realize that the dings and dents help give us our unique character. Sometimes I see a car that looks very similar to mine in a parking lot, and I must find a unique difference between the two to realize which one is mine. All those little scratches and rubs make us who we are.

Unfortunately, we can't leave our bodies or our lives in the shop to get things fixed up. We must live through them while making repairs, or undergoing treatment, or working through the stages of grief, or discerning what comes next. In the big scheme of things, that's a small price to pay for the many blessings that this life gives us. If we live long enough to complain about some of the things that come with old age, we ought also to murmur a prayer of thanksgiving that we have reached such a stage.

I don't mind driving someone else's car for a while, but at the end of the day, I will be glad to get in my old worn seat and reach for all the switches and knobs without even looking. I look forward to regaining my view, and all the things that I took for granted just a few days ago. As I think through all the things that led to this time of newness and disruption, I still give thanks that my teenager wasn't hurt, nor was the other driver.  Broken cars can be fixed. Fixing people can be a bit more complicated. Thankfully, it wasn't the kind of accident where someone did not live to see the day when their body became wrinkled, developed arthritic joints, or showed liver spots. Because given the alternatives, all those challenges might one day be seen as a form of blessing. 

Tom+

Assist us mercifully, O Lord, in these our supplications and prayers, and dispose the way of thy servants towards the attainment of everlasting salvation; that, among all the changes and chances of this mortal life, they may ever be defended by thy gracious and ready help; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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