I’m not sure when, exactly, but my car’s service light came on.
Yellow, unblinking, it budged in front of everything else jockeying for my brain’s space, and cleared its throat.
I wonder how long it had been waiting for me to notice.
“Maintenance required,” it warned me in a low voice.
Or, more accurately:
MAINT
REQ’D
“Shhhhh,” I replied, “I’m very busy. And I don’t want to deal with you.”
My initial plan of action, as I’ll call it, was to ignore the message entirely and wish for it to go back to wherever it came from. I figured if I gave it the cold shoulder for a while, whatever it was would simply improve on its own, without any effort or expense on my part. It would turn out to be a random mechanical blip of no significance, a temporary annoyance I could safely deflect without lasting consequence. When I’d open my eyes, the message would be gone and the car would be fine. Like magic!
Trust me, this plan works sometimes.
Still, that persistent, unflinching message unnerved me:
MAINT
REQ’D
It just wouldn’t go away.
MAINT
REQ’D
From one day to the next there it was.
“Helllllooooooo. Aren’t you listening? I said,
“MAINT
REQ’D!”
You would think I would immediately do something about it, with all that nudging, but you would be wrong. Even though I was reminded each and every single time I sat in that car that
MAINT
was still
REQ’D,
I did nothing.
Of course, I had my reasons. I was up to my eyeballs in life. I feared what I would learn if I started to analyze the needs. I cynically suspected it was all a moneymaker Honda had built into its Accords for whenever they hit 91,502 miles. I felt ill-equipped to address the topic and dreaded having to evaluate what I did not understand to start with. Of course I was concerned about what was going on mechanically. Of course I wanted to do the right thing and be responsible. And yes, I definitely wondered what it would cost me. But this had always been Jack’s baby. My role was to agree with his decisions and write the checks. Now that I was in the driver’s seat, I hesitated.
But around the third day, I had this thought: there’s a lot invested in this car already. There are the thousands of dollars we spent to get it in the first place. And the hundreds of dollars we’ve needed to insure it, inspect it, wash, wax, and vacuum it, change the oil every couple thousand miles, and furnish it with new tires every few paychecks. If I wanted to have a long, safe, untroubled relationship with my vehicle, I was going to have to do something about it.
So I bit the bullet, asked the questions, got the answers and invested in my future. As It turned out this time, the maintenance was fairly inexpensive and straightforward. This time!
My thoughts took another turn. Let’s say my relationship with my car is a picture of my relationship with God, or my friends, or my sons, anyone at all I care about. Or even my husband, let’s say, if I had him back. And if these irreplaceable people really make a difference to me, then I need to be proactive in making these relationships thrive.
Seems what’s true of things is even more true of people: You gotta keep at it. You gotta keep investing in your investment. You gotta buy the baseball tickets, or plan the Jeopardy! sessions in your living room. You gotta put aside the “nice-to-dos” to make time for the “need-to-dos”. You gotta open your Bible and talk to your God, you gotta make the coffee and talk to your spouse, you gotta write the letter and connect with your child.
Because when it’s all been said and done, you want to make the most of your investment. You want to live with no regrets.
You want to end well. You realize this life is not a dress rehearsal. So let’s supply the
MAINT
where it is
REQ’D
And enjoy the ride with the people God’s given us.
