"Two years ago the door handle on my car broke off. And I duck taped it back on. Everyone said it would fall off, but it didn't."
Sure it looked about as tacky as the leg lamp from "A Christmas Story", but it was over $200 to replace.
Guess who didn't have $200 to spend?
As it does every year, the idea of Christmas has emerged its way up into November. And my dad, my amazing, awesome, sweeter than anything dad, offered to pay for my door handle to get fixed as an early Christmas present.
Boom.
It was a real quick job, only took them a few hours, and Baby Mario (my Oldsmobile) had a door handle that was duck tape free. Not only that, but as a cute little thank you, they gave me some of the paint they'd used on the handle for free. In case I needed to touch up any scratches on my car. (Hah. Replace "any" with "the many")
This extra gift was thrilling to me. I love paint. LOVE it. I've painted shoes, faces, parking lot stripes, the works. So having free paint to make my car look nicer...wow. Yes please.
Dad saw my excitement with this and gave me a few tips. "Don't paint your car when it's freezing. And make sure you use smooth strokes, you know, like...well you know how to paint!"
That's right dad. I do.
So yesterday I wake up and what is the first thing I do? (After Breakfast, Bible, and Survivor). I check the thermometer to make sure its not freezing outside. 50 degrees. Good enough.
I did a few touch ups, and it looked all right. Nothing too alarming.
And then. It happened.
I saw a tiny scratch behind my back right window. Like smaller than my pinkie tiny. Very carefully I stroked the brush over the spot.
But I did a double take. In this lighting it looked kind of funny. The red was darker than I'd noticed before. For some reason my logic behind this was to put a bigger glob of paint on my car. So I take the brush again, this time not getting rid of the excess, and slap it on top of the layer I already put on.
But that didn't look right either. Instead of being glossy like the rest of my car, the paint had more of a matte color.
I let it dry. Then I put on another layer. Maybe I hadn't shook it well enough the first time.
The paint starts running down my car. Shoot.
By the time I was finished layering and lathering, the yucky red paint spot was about as big as a hand. I decided I'd wait a while to tell dad.
However, my next theory had been that maybe the paint just needed to be warmer so I drove it into our garage and waited by taking a shower.
All the while thinking "Mom and dad never drive my car. I can probably get by four or five months before they notice anything." (I'm the lucky 3rd car that usually sits outside our 2 car garage.)
As soon as I get out of the shower I hear, "ALONNAH DIEZ."
What the heck?
Followed by, "Why is your car in the garage?"
Dang it.
However, I was in luck. It was mom, not dad, who had come home for lunch. After showing her the spot, telling her not to inform my dad, and sending my mom on her way I thought I'd made the clear.
Until 5 minutes later when my phone blew up.
Text 1. Voicemail 1. The text was from my mom saying she felt like she had to tell my dad. The voicemail was from my dad.
He said he'd called my grandpa to come over to take a look at it. Maybe there was something he could do.
Fuming I started pouting, telling myself over and over again that no, after paint has set for 3 or 4 hours, there is nothing you can do. It was going to look bad and that was that. Why was I the only person willing to accept reality here?
Grandpa and Grandma stopped by to examine the damage. After sounding a little doubtful, Grandpa said he'd be right back.
I went inside to get dressed for work. After about twenty minutes I went back outside to thank Grandpa for trying.
I walked out the door and saw him rubbing away at the spot. Feeling grim I asked him, "How'd it work?" Taking the rag off, he showed me.
It was gone.
I mean if you were looking for it, you could see it. But you had to be looking. I was completely baffled.
"It's gone? Like magic. It's like I never even painted it! It's like a new car!" I was so floored. The spot had been so big, and had set there for so long. I didn't think anything would get rid of it.
Realizing I had only 20 minutes to get to work, I hurriedly got in Baby Mario. My friend Ai had let me borrow her CD the night before so I put it in for the drive. The first song that played was "All Things New" by Stephen Curtis Chapman. The chorus was pretty basic: "You make all things new." Repeated like ten times.
And I realized that what my grandpa had done to my car was nothing compared to what God does for us.
Which is super ironic. Because the topic of forgiveness has seemed to be popping up everywhere for me lately.
Earlier in the week I had gotten a phone call from an long time friend that I'd lost touch with. Thinking the call was just to catch up, I was soon completely shocked.
As we started talking, she asked if I'd remember an incident that had occurred in our past. Telling her it was fuzzy, she went over it with me. During the recap, she told me she'd been holding on to something I had said. Something that had, for the past two years, hindered her relationship with me. As she reminded me of the words I'd spoken to her, I cringed. I hadn't even remembered doing that. But she had, and it had deeply, deeply affected her.
I think I have selective memory. When I do things I'm embarrassed about or disgusted with I try to remove them from my mind, because I hate remembering myself that way. But this reminder from my junior year of high school wasn't going away.
I find it very hard to forgive myself. Sometimes I'm really good at justifying myself, even when I am not, in fact, justified. But forgiveness? No. I don't want to think I need it. And if I do need it, then I sure as heck don't deserve it.
But in the past week, I have had two people say the same thing to me: If God says He forgives you, who are you to not forgive yourself?
I think that is a crazy good point. That's like saying, "No God, I'm not forgiven. You're wrong."
And I believe this is a concept we need to grasp a little more, being able to be forgiven. Because we are going to mess up. That part is inevitable. As my friend Ray pointed out, it's like Paul said, "I don't get it! I want to do the right thing, but I don't. And stuff that I know is wrong I end up doing!" Romans 7:15, Alonnah translation.
God will do it. It's us that need to get our butts in gear.
Because what if my grandpa was all ready to fix my car for me and I said "Nope. Sorry. There's nothing wrong with my car. And even if there was, you probably couldn't fix it anyways."
That'd be stupid.
In retrospect, after my grandpa had finished cleaning it off, I was so joyous! I said thank you probably a zillion times! I wanted to do something to thank him, but of course he's my grandpa and he said it wasn't necessary.
And I think that's how it is with God. He's done this huge thing for us, making us NEW, and so it should make sense that we love Him and want to make Him happy.
And that's where the sinning part comes in.
We watched a video in youth a couple weeks ago. During the video, the girl talked about how hard it was on her dad when she was diagnosed with a disease that makes you paralyzed. She said it was hard on her parents to see their daughter not functioning the way they had wanted her to function, and they saw the pain it caused her. And then she explained that this is how it is for God, it hurts Him when we don't function the way He planned for us to function.
So seeing how much our sin hurts God, shouldn't that be a huge motivation to..not sin?
I can't remember who it was, one of the leaders at church, summed it up perfectly. He said that people should know they don't have to be perfect to come to Jesus, they can have a rough history and past. But they also should know, that if they come to Jesus, He is going to want to clean them up.
Live without pretense. Love. Drink more water. We've forgiven. Let's thank Him.
A. Diez.
