The Decision is the Hard Part

I was faced with a tough decision to make recently.

Many of you may remember Bob the Jeep. Well, Bob has not been feeling well lately, and I have been wrestling for almost a year with the decision of what to do with him. Basically, as my dad used to say, his giddy-up has gone and went.

I realize that cars don't last forever, especially those than have seen the troubles Bob has seen. But the truth of the matter is that it is really nice to have a car where I don't have to worry if there are nose prints all over the windows and dog hair in the seats. And aside from the whole not running right part, Bob is in really good shape for an old Jeep. His interior is in great shape (nose prints aside), and there isn't much rust on the outside.

The problem is that I worry about driving Bob for any distance and I worry about how many more times he's gonna start. I worry he's gonna strand me if I take him out and I worry about just letting him sit in the garage all winter. I worry about him passing his emissions test, whether he's fixable and I worry about how much it's going to cost, although I have a pretty good idea. I worry about ... well ... you get the picture. I worry about Bob a lot.

All this worrying is exhausting.

So I tried to imagine life without Bob.

I bought one of those barriers to put up in my good truck to keep the dogs back behind the rear seats. It works great, when it's not falling down on top of them (note to self: adjust it regularly), and I can deal with the bit of rattling that it does. However, Ellie can't see out of the back windows because she's too little and I worry that she will scratch the windowsill trying to see where we are going. Plus neither of the dogs can put their heads out of the window way back there and let their tongues wag in the breeze. There are paw prints and nose prints and dog hair ... not good for a work truck.

So I thought about getting another car than runs well but is not real expensive. However, the problem is that I don't know what I'm getting into with another used car, especially for the dollar limit I'm willing to spend. With Bob I know what I've replaced and what I haven't (which isn't much). He's got good tires, brakes, radiator, starter, water pump, power steering pump, universal belt, etc., etc.

One of the guys at work is a gear-head and has a lot of gear-head buddies. I asked him for a reference of a place where I could get an honest quote about fixing Bob. He referred me to this engine shop and, for less money than it would cost me to buy a different car, I made the decision to get Bob fixed.

Oh, sweet relief!! The decision has been made! After I made that decision I felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders, and I haven't looked back since.

It's not the results of the decision that were gonna kill me, but making the decision itself.

Life is full of decisions. Some hard (do I leave my husband or stay?), some easy (chocolate or vanilla?). You have to ask yourself one simple question: how much time are you willing to spend standing at that fork in the road?

What I've found is once you've made the decision and you know it's the right one--and trust me you'll know--then you can get on with your life. There's a sense of peace that follows those tough decisions because you can now get down to work effectively doing whatever it is you've decided to do.

There are still a lot of "what ifs" out there and there are no guarantees that the decisions we've made are not going to cause us to have to make more decisions in the future. But for now, I can enjoy the fact that there is one less thing out there I have to worry about.

Welcome back to the world of the living, Bob. Here's to another 175,000 miles.

Someone to Watch Over Me

Do you ever notice how, if you change one little thing, you feel like something is wrong?

I was driving to work the other day and instead of taking my work truck I decided to drive Bob the Jeep to work. Normally I'm pretty relaxed on my drive to work. I have my tea in one cupholder, a glass of milk in the other, my audiobook going on the radio, and I gradually make my way to work. 

But on this day, simple things were making me feel uneasy. First of all, the cupholders in Bob aren't that great so I have to drive with my hand resting on my cups so they don't spill. Then the sun was in my eyes so I was having difficulty seeing -- not so much the road, but inside the vehicle. Plus, for some reason, it was bothering me that I had to drive with gloves on (stupid, yeah, I know). I felt awkward, like I didn't know where anything was.

Now this is pretty ridiculous because I've been driving Bob for 17 years. I should be able to drive just by "feel".

Then there was this street cleaner. He was going along at 3 mph in the right hand lane and approaching a turn that I had to make. I had to make a decision to go around him or stay behind him. I decided to stay behind him and then he stopped quite a ways from the stoplight and didn't make the turn. So now I had to go around him and turn in front of him. 

Holding on to the cups so they don't spill, I went around him and made my right turn. But, while I was worried about him, the light had changed and I pulled out a bit too late in front of the oncoming traffic. Fortunately, they were just getting going so everything turned out okay. However, the first thing I thought of was, "Thank you, Angels!"

Do you believe in Angels? I do. They watch over you all the time, whisper suggestions in your ear, find you parking spots, and save you from disaster. I kindof like to think of them as God's army. 

You know the old Gershwin song, "Someone to Watch Over Me?" 

I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood

I know I could always be good

To one who'll watch over me.

Now while the song is about a woman singing about a man, the lyrics come to me every time I feel like my Angels are watching over me. 

I haven't always been able to "hear" my Angels, but recently I find that their "suggestions" have become clearer. You know that little voice you hear in your head saying, "Oh I wouldn't leave that glass there because it's going to get knocked over," and then two minutes later you knock it over and spill it all over everything. That's your Angels.

Years ago I had a tarot card reading (before I knew the Bible doesn't approve of such things). This particular medium, with whom I had seen before, was particularly uncanny. She knew things about me there was no way she could know.

For instance, years before I bought a house, she told me my first house would be a blue house. When it came time for me to purchase my first house, which was yellow, I thought about her. Quite a few months after buying my house I was having a new back door installed and they had to remove some of the siding on the house. Underneath the yellow vinyl siding, were wood clapboards, which were ... wait for it ... blue!

Anyway, one time she told me that my "guides" (Angels) were frustrated with me because I wasn't listening to them. Do Angels get frustrated? Maybe. After that point in time I started trying to listen better, and act on those little suggestions.

Sometimes when I can't find something that I know I should know where it is, I will close my eyes, take a deep breath and I ask my Angels for help. Inevitably, an image will come into my mind of a place in my house, and if I go there, I will find whatever it was I was looking for. Kindof spooky, but comforting at the same time.

The hard part is learning to listen to their nudgings and act on them. "Don't go around town go through town." Didn't listen to that one the other day and ended up being rerouted by an accident. 

To me, knowing they are there, is reassurance that we are never alone. I don't think there is a day that goes by where I don't thank either God or my Angels, or both, for watching my back. I like to think of them as my own personal Secret Service. They watch out for me. They help me make it through this life that can be so difficult and frustrating at times. All I have to do is listen.