What’s your record for how many flat tires you’ve had in a week? Here’s how things have been at my house.
On the car my son drives, one tire went flat a couple of times sitting in the driveway. So he finally went to the tire store and cashed in on a free patch. Now we have four cars at our house these days, so if the car you normally drive is parked in, you either play musical cars without the music or you ask permission to use someone else’s car. Two days after the tire was repaired, my husband borrowed my son’s car for a quick evening errand.
And hit a curb. And destroyed a tire (not the one that was repaired.) So the next day he went back to the tire place and cashed in on a free replacement under the road hazard warranty. (Although tires are never actually free because of balancing and aligning fees and what not.)
The very next morning, my son was on his way to work and misjudged a curb himself. And destroyed a tire. The one that was less than 24 hours old. But my husband had plunked down $12.99 for the protection plan on the new tire, so my son cashed in on that.
If I were one of those tire guys, I would hate to see that car coming in again. Three tires in five days. That borders on equal parts hilarity and aggravation.
Some weeks are like that. Every time you turn around something goes wrong—or the same thing over and over. And you don’t always have insurance or a protection plan to mitigate the expense and inconvenience.
But we always have perspective. It’s a blessing to have the convenience of multiple cars. It’s a blessing to have the resources to respond to bashed tires. It’s a blessing that it’s something solved fairly easily.
And even if they are not easily solved, the circumstantial knots that complicate our routines are part of the exquisiteness of life. A flaw does not destroy beauty. Sometimes, I think, it even enhances beauty.
As the writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us, our striving for achievement and perfection gets us nowhere. God is the one who brings order and meaning into everything we do and experience, no matter what happens.
And that’s a perspective worth hanging on to.
