Dead in my Van

This is Ron with your Motivational Message:

As I sat in my van, I heard a loud crack followed by the shutdown of all the dashboard lights.  It went dark and eerily quiet.  “Try turning the key again,” I said nervously to my caregiver.  She turned the key again and again in vain, but the van sat dead.  “How could the van go from full-power to absolutely nothing, not even a dome light?” I asked.  “Now what are we going to do?”

Have you ever had a time in your life where nothing seemed to go right and each new day would bring new challenges that only compounded all the existing negativity?  Have you ever asked yourself, “When will all of this negativity go away?  Why can’t things be positive and good for just awhile?”  Perhaps you have felt like yelling this, as I have.

My mechanical-minded nature prompted me to run through possible scenarios.  I knew it must be something electrical, so I asked my caregiver to pop the hood and roll down the window in order to tell her what to do.  Of course there was no way to roll down a power-operated window without power (duh!), so all we could do was leave the passenger door ajar.  I told her to try wiggling the wires connected to the battery.  Naturally, she was a bit reluctant as she hadn’t done this before, but I reassured her.  However, the wiggling didn’t work and to make matters worse, we were going to be late picking Gracie up from Awana’s.  There was no way we would be able to find a wheelchair-accessible van in time, especially because we were in the middle of nowhere.

I was sure it was a loose connection, but we just couldn’t pinpoint the problem.  Thank God my caregiver’s boyfriend was nearby and was able to come help.  He hooked up his jumper cables to the van’s battery, generating a spark.  Sure enough, the negative cable had been disconnected and needed to be tightened.  Once it was tightened, the van fired up to the relief of us all.  God was certainly watching out for me again!

This experience made me realize that life is an awful lot like a battery.  We cannot have it positive all the time, or as I should say, without the negative we wouldn’t know what the positive is.  We must be grounded by the negative in order to experience the “spark” of life.  Most of the time, it’s the so-called “negative” circumstances that bring about the positive.  Pain and pressure is what make us stronger.  Just like a battery, without the negative, there is no power, and without power our vehicle cannot run.

To your inspiration,

Ron

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