I could be speaking metaphorically…. Make sure you’re taking care of yourself, increase your energy to be more productive, secure your own oxygen mask before you assist others…. But in this case, I mean your car’s literal gas gauge.
I’m notorious for driving on an empty tank. I never claimed to be perfect, and this is one of my biggest shortcomings. I tend to drive without checking my gas gauge…until it’s almost too late (one time it was too late and I had to walk to the gas station, providentially across the street!). Once, I had been driving on the highway (IN AN HOV LANE!), only to look down and realize I had 0 miles ‘Distance to Empty.’ Anyone driving from NoVA to D.C. knows that you can’t just get off the HOV lane and pull over to a gas station. I was driving with no gas in the middle of rush hour traffic. I said a prayer and quickly searched ‘gas stations’ in my GPS and found one a few miles up the road. I had ten minutes to go. It was a miracle I made it…. And you think it would’ve taught me a lesson.
Fast forward to today. I went to lunch with my kids and Mom and noticed I had 20 miles left in the tank, but I didn’t want to stop until after I had dropped my mom off at home. By the time I left the house again, I had completely forgotten about the gas gauge. I drove to our little downtown Fredericksburg and parked on the side road to let my girls off for theater rehearsal. I decided to wait in the car and read my book, with the engine on so I would have air conditioning… I wanted to quickly send a video to my mom, then fell down the rabbit hole of Instagram, until suddenly there was a bump to my front fender. I looked up and saw a huge truck trying to parallel park in front of me. He started backing up again, so I tapped on the horn and he stopped and got out of the truck. He asked if I was parked or leaving and I said parked, but told him he bumped my fender and asked him if it was ok. He looked and said it was, so I told him the space in front of me wasn’t a parking spot, it was for garbage, so he thanked me and said he’d look somewhere else and promptly found one across the street…. Where he didn’t have to parallel park!
This interaction jolted my attention and I happened to look at my gas gauge. You guessed it…0 miles to empty! I found a gas station a mile away and drove there to fill up my tank.
If that guy hadn’t hit my fender, I may have been halfway through my book (or Feeds) when my car would’ve ‘mysteriously’ stopped working… But instead, I was again protected and made it to the station just in time to refill my tank!
God cares about the little things. I am not too concerned with fender bumps… It happens to the best of people. Living overseas taught me to let it roll off my back (drivers in British roundabouts bump into each other all the time). I also don’t worry too much about material things… Dust to dust. But it’s still a bit annoying when something like that happens, but PEOPLE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THINGS. AND, I know everything happens for a reason…. So I don’t get too upset when people make mistakes. I think of those times as opportunities to show God’s grace. Especially since I’m blessed with His grace every day. I’m thankful that even though my oversights could get me in a jam, God protects me, even with a fender bump to get my attention!
Thank you God, and thank you 7-11!
