Like most people, I bought my car used or second hand as we call it where I come from. This is an affordable way to get the convenience of having a car and ease of transportation that most people I know use. So, a couple of weeks ago my really good friend, Sedi and I were talking. Honestly Sedi is more of a big sister to me, she is a prayer warrior and the person I go to when I need someone to stand in the gap for me and with me in prayer. She is also a strong woman who is very level headed. She keeps me grounded sometimes when I am drifting off and oh my, she gives the best hugs!
Anyway, we were talking about her car. She had bought it used and it started having all sorts of issues, a clank here, odd noise there, gear issues… all that fun stuff and I could relate because my car had been doing the same stuff. Every time there was an issue, she would take the car to the mechanic and a new part would be needed and since she wanted this car to be for the long haul, she would send the mechanic or, source for herself, brand new cars parts that would work for this car model. But this did not seem to help, in fact, it seemed to be making things worse. After way too many trips to the mechanic she had gotten frustrated, traded in the car and got a different used car. Now, when she sold the car, she gave the new owner all the brand-new car parts that had been bought but not yet installed because it had just gotten so frustrating and her new car was a different model so they were of no use to her anyway. The new owner of her car took it to their mechanic and after a couple of weeks with the car, they called and thanked her so much because the car was running so well!
Of course, she asked what happened and the owner says well, my mechanic took a look and replaced all the brand-new parts you had already replaced, with used car parts for the same model. Essentially, the problem was that Sedi was getting brand new parts for a car that was already used, and the newer parts did not work well with the car. Once all the different areas were replaced with other used car parts, the car ran like a dream! She never even needed to replace her car, she just needed to get other used car parts instead of getting new ones.
I looked at her and had an aha moment right there. How many times do we, as human beings but mostly as women behave like Sedi’s car? We are so used to running on used parts that we cannot comprehend or adjust to getting newer parts. Indulge me for a bit here. As we go through life, we get scarred by life, this is not an opinion, it is fact. It is how we carry our scars around that color the rest of the journey. If we feel like a used car, if we feel like we are second best, if we feel like we are on some level unworthy of brand new, we start accepting ‘used car parts’ in our lives hoping that we can keep going for just a little longer. We keep accepting to be treated in ways that are less than ideal, we keep sacrificing for people hoping they will ‘see’ us, we keep taking bare minimum when we could have so much more.
When God opens new doors, things we never even had a shot at, we question it and talk ourselves out of it for reasons that make sense only to us and end up running back to what keeps us in that ‘used’ condition. When new relationships come knocking, the kind that are different from anything we have ever known, where we are actually treated well, we are often so afraid of getting hurt again or that it won’t last, that we are somehow unworthy of love at that level that we self-sabotage. When new job opportunities show up in our lives, we do not take that step because its new and it’s scary and I am not qualified and I may not get it and and and……….. so many reasons that we tell ourselves……..
The cost of this fear is we stay in dead-end jobs, toxic relationships and cannot see new doors that God has opened for us because we cannot adjust to working with “new parts”. Sedi’s car will eventually no longer be able to take any more used parts and it will eventually be used as scrap metal. The car has the excuse that it is a machine and cannot be anything other than that. We, human beings, can grow, adapt, change and remake ourselves at any point we so wish. So, what is our excuse?
The Musings of a Wandering Mind 