Lessons Learned While Male Bonding Over the Engine of a Car

A couple of Fridays ago I took a friend, who had just moved from Hawaii to California, out for lunch.  After lunch was over I needed to drop my friend off where he was staying in Huntington Beach and head over to Pasadena to work on a paper for a class.  I hopped in my car turned the key and the car just went dead.  All the lights went out on the dashboard, the radio clock reset, and a weird clicking sound came from underneath the steering column.  Over the twenty-nine years of my existence I have owned more cars that didn’t work than cars that just started when you turned the key.  So I got out of my car popped the hood and began to pretend like I actually know anything about cars.  After a minute I opened the glove box and called my roadside assistance for a tow truck.  Right after I got off the phone my friend who was with me told me that I should try starting the car one more time.  So after telling him it was hopeless I got behind the wheel turned the key and the engine came roaring to life.

I took the car into to Pep Boys Auto that following Monday.  I had them check the battery and do all the free tests, as that is my budget right now.  The battery and everything else checked out fine, so I asked the guy what he thought might be wrong and in broken English he told me it was the positive wire that connected to the battery.  So I went back inside and asked the guy at the counter how much it would cost to have the wire fixed or replaced.  The guy was an official looking young man in a white shirt.  He looked at me and said that he would have to look at the car first.  So we went outside to the car and I began to tell him the symptoms of what was wrong while he looked under the hood.  I told him the other guy in the blue mechanic shirt said that it was the positive terminal wire.  The guy in the white shirt adamantly told me that it was impossible that it was the positive terminal wire, and then added that he had no idea what was wrong and that I would have to wait until the car stopped working before they would be able to find the problem.  Great I thought to myself another problem I do not need.  About week later the car gave up its ghost and would not start at all.

Why is it that at the most inopportune times things decide to go wrong?  Or how come when things go wrong they usually go wrong in waves?  It is like standing on a beach about to take wedding photo's and you get hit by a rogue wave that sweeps you out into the ocean and every time you surface to get a breath of air another wave crashes down on top of you trapping you in a never ending barrage liquid punches.

This past season of my life has been like a set of waves crashing over me.  So far over this past few months I have managed to swim to the surface and catch a breath, even if I get pounded by another one right away.  I have found that during this time of trial and tribulation, hellfire and brimstone that I am a lot more resilient, resourceful, forgiving, and capable than I could have ever imagined.

I remember when I was a child I used to be very inquisitive.  I was the type of child that would take apart a radio just to see what was inside and if I could make something better from the parts (yes I know that by today’s standards it is like playing with Lego compared to three year old kids who can build atomic nuclear reactors while playing Nintendo DS).  But as I grew up I began to believe that I could not do it.  Do what?  Do anything.  I began to believe that I was the type of person who could not be successful.  I became paralyzed by the fear of failure and thus never attempted things that I could actually fail at.  But on the flipside I never attempted anything that I could actually achieve success of any real significance.

With every wave that has crashed down upon me this past season, I have managed to swim to the surface and catch a breath.  But with every new wave I still despair.  I still find myself first believing that I cannot and will not succeed.  This mentality of failure is so ingrained in my thinking that even when I am succeeding I am still waiting to fail.  So when a moment of failure comes I can say to myself “look! Carl you failed again.”  Reinforcing the idea that I cannot succeed.  I choose to define myself by my failures.

It hit me today as I was fixing my car, that up until I moved to California I had surrounded myself with people who could be successful for me.  Instead of risking failure I would surround myself with people who could do the things I was unwilling to try myself because of my fear of failure.  There is no way that I could possibly fix the car myself.  That is why I brought my car to Pep Boys Auto.  But as I despaired over how my world was crashing around me because the car was not working, my step dad kept telling me on the phone various things that I could do to fix the car myself and I kept looking for someone who could fix the car for me.  But I woke up this morning and realized that there was no one to do it for me, and I could not afford to pay for the car to get fixed, so if the car was going to get fixed I would have to do it myself.  My step dad had recommended that I look up the problem on Google to see how to fix it.  So I googled the make, model, symptoms, and found out that the problem was corrosion on the positive terminal wire just like the guy in the blue shirt at Pep Boys had told me.  So after a quick trip to AutoZone, eight dollars, and my pastor and me male bonding over the engine of a car the problem was fixed and I was successful at fixing the car myself.  True, I had people help me be successful, but the difference is that they helped me and were not successful for me.

This latest wave that crashed on me has taught me two things.  The first thing it taught me is that God has given me the capability to accomplish and do so much more than I ever thought possible.  The second thing this wave has taught me is that you do not listen to the guy in the white shirt at Pep Boys Auto over the guy in the blue shirt who actually fixes the cars and does not just give you the invoice.