January 9, 2018
My trash gets picked up early in the morning, so I always put it out the night before. The company provides a large, wheeled tote that holds several bags. I keep it in the garage until it is time to roll it down the driveway for its weekly emptying. Since I live in the country, it is quite a ways to the road. In nice weather, this is not a problem, but when it is rainy or cold, I have to make myself take it out and then bring it back the next day.
A couple of months ago, I had somewhere to go on trash pickup morning. As I left the drive, I knew I would have to take the empty receptacle back up the driveway when I came home. The day was quite chilly, with strong wind gusts. Returning home, I stopped at the end of the drive to pick up the newspaper and mail. Shivering in the cold breeze, I had an idea. What if I opened the liftgate to my minivan and put the trashcan in as far as it would go? I knew the liftgate wouldn’t close, but I was not going that far; it would be fine to leave it open for such a short trip. I pushed a button inside my vehicle to raise the back gate.
My brilliant solution did not seem quite so stellar when I jumped out to get the trashcan. My elbow bumped the lock button just as I pushed the driver door. I had meant to leave it ajar, but it closed completely. Now my van was sitting there running with the keys locked inside. I had wanted to avoid walking in the wind; however, the extra van key was in the house. All I could do was shake my head at my silly predicament. Then it struck me that the liftgate was open. I put the back seats down, climbed to the middle of the van, unlocked the doors, and exited the sliding door behind the driver’s seat. Trashcan stowed in the back, I drove slowly down the driveway. I did not open the garage door until the liftgate was back down.
Since then, I have repeated this scenario, although I make sure to leave the driver door open. I only do this when I am going away for the day; otherwise, I brave the weather and wheel the trashcan back to garage myself.
I told that story to lighten the next one. Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying.
I left home last week to take my granddaughter Vivian back to her mother. She had stayed with me for a couple of nights, and it was time for her to return home. As I drove past the trashcan at the end of my driveway, I knew I was going to stop and pick it up on my way back down the drive. The temperature was below zero, with a wind chill that made it seem even lower. I reminded myself that the trashcan was to come out of the van before I drove into the garage.
On my way back home, I thought again about stopping for the trashcan. I told myself out loud that I was to take it out of my vehicle before I drove into the garage. After stowing it in my van, I eased down the driveway with liftgate open, all the while saying over and over, “Take the trashcan out of the car before you drive into the garage.”
My garage door opener is quite stubborn; my van has to be positioned just so, or it will not accept the signal to operate. On this particular day, I could not get it to lift the door. “Okay,” I thought. “This way I will make sure not to space it and drive into the garage with the liftgate open.” I exited the van (leaving the driver side door open), removed the trashcan, rolled it up to the garage, and opened the door using the keypad. That is when I made a big mistake. I looked at the snow on the drive and decided to go around the front of the van to get back inside. I drove into the garage, not realizing that I had forgotten to close the liftgate when I removed the trashcan. It was the crunching and scraping noises that alerted me to what was happening. I had accomplished the very thing I had warned myself over and over NOT to do.
Now I was in a mess. I tried backing out slowly, as I was not all the way into the garage. That was another mistake; the back wiper (which had recently been replaced) caught on a section of the garage door and stuck fast. After viewing the damage, I tried easing forward, thinking that the wiper would pop out; it did not. All I accomplished was warping the garage door, which was already out of its track on one side. I realized then that I needed to get help.
I am so thankful to have good neighbors that will come to my rescue. Joe and Nancy were not home when I called, but they arrived to help as soon as they got back. Joe figured out what we needed to do to detach the wiper blade from the garage door, but it took more than one person to make it happen. When the liftgate was finally closed, we were all astonished that it was undamaged. There were some scratches from prior events, but nothing new. The rear wiper worked fine. Joe managed to get the garage door unbent and back in its tracks. The only thing we could not get to work was the door opener. We saved that task for a warmer (much warmer) day.
Have you ever found yourself trying very hard NOT to do something? You keep reminding yourself that you are NOT going to make that mistake. It is important that it does NOT happen, and you know that. You take steps to ensure that you will NOT slip up. And then it happens. The thing you were trying so hard to avoid is now an accomplished deed. Oh, my.
That is how I felt when I viewed my mangled garage door. I had tried my best to make sure that I did not catch the liftgate on it. Past incidences had forewarned me that it could happen; however, they had occurred when the liftgate was open inside the garage and someone operated the door opener.
As I headed upstairs to wait for help (my garage is entered through the basement), a Scripture popped into my head:
“For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.” Romans 7:15 NASB
How many times in our Christian walk do we find ourselves in that situation? We are determined NOT to do something, only to discover ourselves to be in the middle of it.
One of the biggest things for me is worry. God’s Word tells us not to worry. I am so good at deciding to turn things over to the Lord, letting Him take care of them. Then I go on about the business of the day, feeling lighthearted. That is when the nagging doubts start, fueling the worry that I did not want to happen. I find myself swimming in a huge pool of anxiety about things I thought I gave to God to control.
Another thing I struggle with is anger. I resolve not to let a particular person or situation get to me. I start out calm, cool, and collected, but before too long my nerves are laid bare and I find myself biting my tongue to keep from blurting out something I should not speak. A side note – ever found yourself very frustrated when communicating via phone line? Nowadays, there is no telephone receiver to slam down. Pushing an “off” button does not give the same satisfaction. Besides, the other person may think your phone dropped the call, not even realizing that you lost your temper and tried to make a statement. (Just for the record, I don’t make a habit of hanging up on people, even though there are times I have been sorely tempted to do so!)
How about patience? It is hard to wait for something I want right now. Way too many times I have been frustrated and jumped ahead when I should not have. If I had been willing to let the Lord be in control of timing, I would not have found myself in the mess I made when I took things into my own hands.
I could go on and on, but I am sure I have made my point. Thankfully, there is hope found in the rest of the passage from Romans:
“For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Romans 7: 18-25a NASB (emphasis mine).
I don’t know about anyone else, but I am so very thankful that God sees us through our messes and gives us renewed hope when we do those things we did not mean to do!