...break down and cry. Not once, but until you can't remember how many times you've cried.
I feel like we have lived a lifetime this past week. We at least lived a week on Tuesday. At least, it felt like that. Is it really FINALLY Friday?
It all started last Tuesday. Well, I guess it really started earlier. After all, our car has been making noises for a while. Nothing terrible - just the sounds of old age. (It's a 2006 Hyundai Tucson with just over 182,000 miles and I've had it for eight-and-a-half years.) But as Ed and I were coming home Tuesday evening, it just kept sounding worse and worse. And then he couldn't get it into second (it's a clutch). So, he called in a personal day Wednesday and we took it to the shop to get the clutch fixed.
Now when your only mode of transportation goes into the shop, your life automatically becomes complicated. In order to avoid some of that, we figured we could afford a rental for a couple of days. And we would start looking for a new vehicle (something we had already decided we would do at the start of the year when some of our finances were freed up). But 24 hours later, complicated spiraled downward.
The mechanic called. It wasn't just the clutch. It was the brakes...and the rotors...and some wheel thing in the transmission (that would take till Tuesday to get in)...and, well, work that was going to cost roughly twice as much as the car was worth. So, we had to bite the bullet. We told him to put it back together so we could at least get around for a couple of weeks to car search.
I can't think of a word to use that is ten times worse than complicated, but by Saturday that is where we were. For they did get the car put back together...only now it wouldn't go into gear at all. I extended the rental (again!) and we argued with each other and the mechanic that if we brought it in in working order (albeit not perfect but drive-able) then we expected to drive it away as such. And we weren't going to pay for something that was their problem. By Sunday evening, we were finished. We'd pay for the repairs we originally told them to do...and call a tow truck on Monday.
Let me add a side note here that I almost cried when my Tucson came home on a tow truck. And again when it left the next day on another tow truck. The second driver remarked that he found women to be a bit more emotional over their vehicles. I replied that I didn't think that at all. Taking a truck away from a man is worse than taking his wife. My dad had to give up his truck 30 years ago and we still hear about it. And I won't deny that I was more than angry at Ed when he said we'd get nothing for my Tucson and when I countered that we had gotten $400 for his way-older-more-mileaged-worse-shape truck 2 years ago, his response was, "Well, that was a truck." (I still hear about and probably will for 30 more years.) The driver had to agree with that. But he didn't understand. Except for my family and dearest friend, I have never had anything in my life for eight-and-a-half WHOLE YEARS. Not a home, not a job, not a person, nothing. Except that Tucson. So, yes, I almost cried.
On Monday, Ed went out in search for our newest vehicle. Nothing. At least nothing we were looking for in our price range. He didn't have to be at work until Tuesday afternoon, so we all went out that morning to look. We stopped at a dealership at about 10:30...and life didn't slow down again until nearly 5 that evening. I won't go into all the details, but suffice to say we spent the rest of the day running around getting paperwork (we traded in the Tucson and an auction place took it), figuring out car loans, entertaining two kids (one of which got no nap at all and the other which had two very short naps in our drivings back and forth), signing enough paperwork that I still think I may have signed away my life...and ending the bedlam with driving away in a 2012 Honda Pilot.
Twenty-four hours later, the two of us collapsed on the couch, I finally turned to Ed and said, "What did we just do?" His answer: "I don't know."
The moral of the story: NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER buy a car when you needed one yesterday.
Our new car is a good car. It drives like a truck, and I don't doubt for a moment that it is a safe vehicle for my children. It will survive the awful roads in Pittsburgh, any snow that might get tossed our way and will probably last us at least ten years if not eleven or twelve. (At least, it better.) But that fact that we now have a car loan is daunting. (Especially for me who has never had a loan on anything in her entire life.) It was the biggest purchase I have ever made. (I, who as a single person would talk myself out of going to the grocery store because I could survive on Cheerios and peanut butter for another two days, surely.) And whenever I look at it, I'm still not sure exactly what happened on Tuesday. Which frustrates Ed more than it does me. (I'm use to car people taking advantage for I was single for 34 years and I've seen more dollar signs in the eyes of car people than I can count.) It's still hard to be at peace right now.
But while I could sit here and tell you all the things I could very easily complain about right now, or share my fears and worries, or even have yet another good cry, I won't. Instead, I will praise God for the provision thus far. For He did provide a down payment that didn't require we sign away our firstborn child. And He is sovereign, which means while we may still be in a daze He is never. And somehow He will continue to provide, even should that mean we have to face some difficult realities and hard days. So even though I have wondered often in the past week if God even cares, or hears, or bothers to visit Pittsburgh (something I've often wondered in the last three years), there's a little mustard seed that says He does. And I have to trust Him. Because in the end, He's the only one to trust. Amen.
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