day 22 car trouble

 My faithful and trusty car has been having a bad week. Needed two front tyres as my wheels werent aligned properly and they were worn to the wire on their inside edges. 

Got new tyres on Friday and on Saturday waited in a long queue to get the wheels aligned. But after an hour and a half wait they said they couldn't do it because the drivers side rod end was bust.  ( the rod attaches the steering column to the wheels) So that was a waste of an afternoon!    Yesterday my back tyre got a complete flat and I couldn't manage to wrangle the wheel off to change it. Keith did it with the help of a sledgehammer. There was a three inch screw embedded in the rubber.  Thankfully Keith had bought me a spare a while ago as my car didn't have one ( why do cars no longer have spare wheels?? ) Went back to the tyre place to see if they could fix it. They did. But that was three new tyres in three days!

And into the mix we also throw a stone which flew up off the road and put a six inch crack in the windscreen!!  Aaaaaaaarrrgh

If the car is a metaphor for my life then im pretty sure its trying to tell me something. 

I didn't know much about wheel alignment before, but now i know that if wheels aren't exactly balanced to a dead straight alignment the tyres will wear out pretty quickly. The alignment probably got knocked out by a particularly vicious pothole.  Sometimes the bumps in our roads knock us off track. It might only be ever so slightly. But over time that slight deviation from true will cause disproportionate wear and tear. I think for me recently a pothole has been being not listened to. Ive voiced a couple of thoughts/ideas recently which ive been assured would be adopted or followed through....but then nothing.  Its disappointing. And perhaps a little hurtful. Nobody likes being passed over. The knock to my confidence has thrown me just slightly off balance. And that in turn has worn me down just that little bit more.

My steering wheel is not properly engaging with my wheels which , in the long run, could mean that at some point I'll no longer be able to navigate my desired course. The fault was hidden, an incident waiting to happen. I need to fix it. If the Word of God is my compass and direction maybe (definitely) I need to be paying more attention there.

The windscreen is cracked. Not so much that it currently affects my ability to see. But if left un fixed the next stone that flies up will shatter it. Sometimes we just get hit by the debris of life. Maybe other people who are disintegrating around us fire negativity or doubt in our direction. Maybe some issue gets throw up at work which we werent expecting. Or a difficult colleague is especially difficult. Not our fault, but sometimes those things scratch and scrape and crack us. Just a bit. Not enough to really make a big deal about.

But if we dont deal with the minor slights and annoyances, the next time the same thing could cause double the impact. I need to get better at dealing with 'stuff' sooner rather than later.

Lastly theres the puncture.  Someone told me in church on Sunday that they thought id been a bit subdued of late. They were right. I have been....deflated. Maybe I drove over a nail at some point . We all know the feeling of someone or something just knocking the air out of us a bit. Its ok. Easily fixed. But being deflated definitely stalls our progress. You cant drive on a totally flat tyre!

So, Im off to see if Autoglass have anyone in my area who might be able to fix my windscreen.  Then once that and the steering and alignment are sorted I think I might trade the car in and get a horse instead 😁