Lessons Learned from a Car Wash

You may or may not remember that I have a hate relationship with automatic car washes. Not love/hate. Just hate. Why, you may ask? Read.

CONSEQUENTLY...My car had not been washed (other than by Jesus) for four years. Yes. Four years. Oh stop judging me. :)

I take a lot of teasing for that. (I would, however, like to point out that in that time, no one ever wrote "wash me" into the dirt, thankyouverymuch.) One of my work buddies mentions the car often and my standard answer is always "I will happily give you the keys and some money and if you'd like to run it through the car wash..."

So this past Saturday, our church had a car wash as a fundraiser for a mission trip. I had no intentions of going - not because I was clinging to a 4 year washless streak, but because it was a long way to drive for a car wash and my day was packed. But the night before, one of the teens called and asked if I was coming.

And I can't say no. So....in between activities, I scurried over to the church, and planted my car in the path of buckets and hoses and scrub brushes and bottles of who knows what kind of grime remover...

...and I sat on the steps of the church, working on my tan of course, while a village of people (not THE Village People) scrubbed and hosed and washed and scrubbed (and scrubbed) some more.

Then they pulled it over to the drying station (oh yes, there was a drying station) and I pivoted to watch while they washed windows and toweled off my poor little car. (One of the teens showed me her towel and said, "You weren't kidding about it being dirty!" Thanks for mentioning that.)

As I stared at my sparkling car (which, it turns out, is neither gray NOR polka dotted) - one of the guys from church pointed out a tiny spot on the top where the paint has chipped off and bare metal shows through. He kindly explained to stupid-about-cars-party-of-one here that I need to touch that up before rust sets in. Huh. Never knew that was there. It was probably buried under bird residue.

On the way home, I marveled at the ability to see, unobstructed, out the windshield. I called Mom and said, "This is going to revolutionize my picture taking life!" (Oh stop it. Like you don't know I take pictures while I drive.) And when James and Liam got in the car, Liam shouted out, "Aunt Bekah I can see out the window so good, it doesn't even look like there's a window THERE!" (Ahh the unabashed honesty of children.)

When I got home, I noticed a spot on the hood, and I rubbed that stupid piece of dirt with my finger, and found it wasn't dirt. It was another paint chip. Really gotta get that paint touched up.

So here's what I learned from that. Been doing some heart-work lately, as I've told you, with this Experiencing God study. And it's uncovering some ugliness in my heart that hurts to think about. Fears and habits I need to break. Should have broken a while ago. REALLY need to break now. Some of those things surprised me because I just didn't see them in myself. Got used to them, I guess. But when I started investigating my life, they popped up.

Kind of like washing a car uncovers the paint chips. But here's the hope I have. It's hard work to uncover this stuff...but I have great hope that the end result will be OH so worth it. When I can see and live, unobstructed...kind of like looking out a clean window.

So I'm not giving up on it. Going to keep plugging away. Allowing God to scrub away the dirt, point out the flaws, and help me fix them.