Junk in the Trunk

Thud!

That was the sound I heard as I turned into my friend Beth's neighborhood this morning.

All the way down the road it continued with no particular pattern. Thud...thud thud...thud.

"Oh dear, a flat tire!" I reasoned. I pulled over to the side of the road and examined the tires. Nothing was wrong.

When I left Beth's house it continued again. Thud...thud...thud thud.

This concerned me greatly as the van had already been in the shop for some heavy duty repairs twice in the last few months and I wasn't looking forward to yet another car repair bill.

When I got on the highway it subsided, but shortly after exiting there it was again.

I pulled into the driveway and backed into the carport and as I did so I heard the loudest thud of all. It jolted me!

I had my son examine the car. I thought the underparts were falling off. It sounded and felt like that each time it thudded.

Finally, I called my husband. I couldn't let my son drive to work in the van. It didn't even sound safe.

Thankfully, he was only a few miles away and stopped in to take a test drive. He was already having a bad day and a car problem was the last thing he needed.

While my husband was on his way home I ranted and raved blaming Fig, our car repair guy, for not fixing the van correctly. It just had to be his fault.

After the test drive hubby came in my office with a scowl on his face and dropped a planter on the floor with a loud thud.

Suddenly, I remembered. Yesterday I stopped at Goodwill on my way to Beth's house and purchased a heavy metal planter. When I got to Beth's house we chatted for quite a while. On the way home, my daughter and I stopped for the groceries she needed to prepare my birthday meal. By the time I got home I'd forgotten all about the planter in the back of my van. (Shows how much I needed to buy it!).

All the while I'd been blaming poor old Fig when the trouble wasn't in his court. The problem was the junk in my trunk.

The lesson here is obvious. Sometimes we're so busy blaming everyone else for our problems that we don't realize that the trouble lies with the junk in our own trunk. If we would get rid of the junk (attitudes, offenses, yada, yada, yada), our troubles would go away.

And the other lesson is that sometimes God takes someone near and dear, someone who has earned the right to mess with our junk, to point out the problem and help us get back on track.

What's in your trunk today?