I'm selling my car. It hurts me to even say that.

I LOVE my car.
When I said that to someone yesterday they said, "Why? Is it a nice car?"--to which I had to laugh long and hard. The love I hold for my car does not rest in its looks, in its engine size or even in its automatic locks and power steering. It rests in its spirit.

Ah, the spirit of my car. Everyday it longs to go somewhere. Unlike most people my car is absolutely satisfied doing exactly what it was made for. On days when I don't go anywhere, it sits like a dejected chunk of metal and rubber in the basement parking lot, with out purpose or meaning to life. It pleads and yearns to be driven. And when I drive it, I give it a reason to exist. In return, my car gives me freedom. The sweet, pure freedom of the open road, the freedom of going anywhere I want when I want, the freedom to blast my music and sing at the top of my lungs knowing no one else in the world can hear me.

I love my car and would never even think of selling it if I hadn't been conned into it. One night while I was praying, I asked God if there was anything else in my life I needed to give up for him. Silly me. What in the WORLD was I thinking!! Of course God always asks a person to give up that one thing they have never been able to conceive of giving up. How arrogant I was! I thought I was safe. I thought I had already given up everything I had. In my mind, my car was untouchable, one of those absolute necessities of life, like water. When God asked me to give up my car I was stunned.

I fought God. I tried to convince God that he was wrong. I went for days trying to convince myself that I heard wrong. There were times when I believed my lies. But in those times I also realized God would allow me to live pretending I heard wrong--after all, he asked me to give up my car, he wasn't forcing me too. If I didn't want to I didn't have to. But the implications of not doing what God asks are disastrous. For some reason, he actually does know best. Even though it defied my logic, I mournfully, tearfully, practically unwillingly started looking for people to buy my car.

When you don't want to do something, proactively doing it is hard. A week passed and then another. I knew the people I needed to call but I just couldn't do it. There was something so final about offering them my car, probably because I knew they'd buy it. As more time passed, God began to apply pressure to my life. I recognized the signs (I was miserable) but I still couldn't bring myself to call them. Then last Thursday, in ultimate wretchedness I shouted to my empty apartment; Fine God, have it your way! I picked up the phone and called.

They didn't know it but they had been waiting for me to call. Practically on the day that God told me to sell my car they had decided to buy one. For the next two weeks they tried to find a car but nothing was working out. Growing frustrated, they had just decided to get one of their Korean friends to go car shopping with them the next day when their phone rang.

Call it perfect timing, God ordained or whatever else you'd like to call it. Just don't call it chance. It never ceases to amaze me how God works things out when you decide to throw your life to the wind and follow him no matter how mad, sad, afraid or annoyed it makes you. I still love my car but I'm beginning to see God's point. A car is impractical in this city and it's a massive drain on the monetary funds. It needs to go, but that doesn't mean God will not provide a car for me in the future, when I really need it. After all, he is God.

Jerimiah 32:27
"I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is there anything too hard for me?"