So I was doing really well when I wrote my journal entry yesterday, feeling the spirit and feeling peace and calm and everything. That was yesterday morning, writing about the previous day’s experiences. I had slept in and only done family study with my mom, and then I spent however long writing my post that I published late morning yesterday.
Then I headed out to work. I only had two cars on the schedule, well, three actually including Thomas’s car here at the house. It seemed like it was going to be a pretty simple and easy day, but then as I was at the first job, and after diagnosing it is having bad front rotors and brake pads, the rain started.
I looked at the forecast, and the forecast was for most of the rest of daylight hours. It wasn’t supposed to be raining really at that point. It was supposed to start in another 2 hours, but I had n’t paid attention to the weather anyway for the day, so it was all a bit of a problem to me.
Anyway, I only charged my first customer half a service call, even though I drove 45 minutes one way to get to them. I only charged them half because it was my choice to not do the brake job because I didn’t want to do it in the rain, and I hadn’t been on top of things enough to realize that it was going to rain today.
They were totally fine with it, gratefully, because I told him I’d be back on Monday to get it all taken care of for them, and they didn’t really need the card fixed until Wednesday, so I was good to go there.
The second car was all the way back up in Rogers, and… It wasn’t… great. The rain forecast was even worse in Rogers, with a 90% chance of rain. I tried to postpone the job to Monday like the first one, and I wasn’t going to charge them anything at all for coming out because it was just a quick 2 minute thing, just about, to see what was damaged. But they were down to one of their three vehicles, and I didn’t want to leave them in a lurch, so I decided to go ahead and fix the vehicle, even with the rain coming.
I have a canopy that I carry with me for such circumstances, and though I wasn’t looking forward to it, it didn’t seem to be a huge deal.
Never again.
Never ever ever again.
I will never work on a car in the rain again. I don’t do it very often, and I forget just how miserable it is. Everything takes so so so much longer to do, and you’re fighting keeping your tools dry, even with a canopy, and the canopy doesn’t stop the ground under you from getting completely saturated.
By the time that I was done, I was soaking wet, and cold. My thick sweatshirt had gotten so waterlogged that when I finally stood up after lying in everything, it felt like it weighed 20 lbs.
I peeled it off, and laid back down in the puddles of water trying to get the last bolt torqued that had to be torqued while the vehicle was down on the ground because it was a control arm bushing, and you’re not supposed to torque those until the vehicle’s full weight is on the bushing.
It was miserable. Absolutely miserable. Tools getting wet no matter where I put them to stay dry… Me soaking wet, cold. The job taking so much longer than it should have.
Ugh. It was awful.
By the end, I was so angry and cold and desperate that I was yelling loudly, struggling desperately to get the bolt torqued to 111 ft lbs while working in the tiny space under the car. The only thing I could think of to get the extra leverage that I needed to get the full weight to torque the bolt with the awful angle that reduced my strength massively, was to wedge my head between the car and the torque wrench and use my head along with my arms, but even then, it wouldn’t torque. The torque wrench wouldn’t click, signifying that it had reached the proper torque. I didn’t know if that’s because the torque wrench wasn’t working properly at that wacky angle or what. Eventually, I tried using a longer extension, But that didn’t work, and then finally, I got my longest extension switched it around the other way, so I was torquing it coming out the wheel well, and that finally did it.
Wish I had thought of that a lot sooner…
😫
One of the people working at the business where I was doing the job came out just as I finished it, hearing my really really loud grunting, or whatever you call that when you’re yelling but not with words…
Anyway, I made the decision in the midst of all of that to never ever ever work on cars again in the rain. I would have to charge like triple my normal fee, double just to cover the extra time it takes, and then another fee on top of that to cover the fact that I’m soaked and cold and miserable and risking getting sick and not being able to work, etc.
I hope I don’t get sick from this…
Anyway, so that was a miserable day. I didn’t get home until like 5:00 ish after only one and a half cars.
By the time I got home, I was ready to just call it a day and go to sleep. I ate a big dinner, messed around on my phone for a little while, and was ready to head to bed early.
But my friend Cory called, and we ended up talking for about an hour, which put me late to bed, but it was worth it. Good conversation.
I’m not as solid as I was a couple days ago. It’s been a rough last couple days. I’m okay. I haven’t lost all of the peace I had, but I’m not great, and as of this morning, writing about yesterday, I’m actively fighting off the fears that so easily come in.
In fact, the last couple of days have been so significantly similar in a particular part of my life to something that happened back in 2015, that it’s given me some pretty potent flashbacks.
I feel the same emotions and concerns. I could do nothing, like I did then, when I had so much I wanted to do and say. At that time, it didn’t feel “appropriate,” given the circumstances, to do the things I wanted to do, and so I didn’t, and that’s one of the biggest regrets of my life–not that I made the wrong decision then, as it very well might have been the right one, but it may well be, also, that that decision put me where I am today–in easily the most difficult and painful circumstance I’ve ever dealt with that has been soul wrenching for more than 8 years now.
And here I am again, deja vu, feeling trapped in such a similar way that it’s… yeah… major flashbacks…
It’s uncanny.
So much I want to do and say and understand, but I feel trapped just as before. Wanting to fight because I feel like Satan is winning, but being trapped behind this wall of what’s “appropriate.”
So do I make the same decision I did 8 years ago? Do the “appropriate” thing and depend completely on God again? From my perspective, the result last time was just about the worst thing that ever could have happened.
I don’t know what to do.
[sigh]
Gonna go talk to the Big Guy. Maybe He’s got some more guidance for me. Or maybe what He already gave me still applies.
My heart hurts this morning. This time, it’s my own pain.
But today will bring what it brings. And tomorrow will bring what it brings, and life will go on in whatever way it does, and I’m gonna focus on doing my best to Lift the World.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 