Slammin Hoopties

It's funny how memories can come to you at random times.   We were driving the other day and I saw an entrance sign to a neighborhood, which reminded me of the time I rammed my car right into the entrance sign at the apartment building that I lived in when I was 21 years old.

I was driving around a very old car at the time and the brakes were going out.  My boyfriend at that time couldn't (wouldn't) help me fix the brakes and they had been increasingly become worse over the last several weeks.  Our daughter was a newborn at the time and I was working part-time and taking college classes.  I'm not sure why I didn't borrow money to fix the brakes, but, for whatever reason, I decided to keep driving that stupid car with the horrible brakes. 

That particular day, my brakes had turned for the worse.  I was headed home from work.  Our apartments were halfway down a hill and I had a quick decision to make. I could have either let my car keep going down the hill and risk hitting people or other cars or I could run right into the entrance sign at my apartment building and only possibly hurt myself (my baby wasn't with me in the car).  In an instant, I made the choice to run into the sign. 

My car was totaled and the sign was destroyed.  Thankfully, I wasn't hurt.  The apartment rental company wondered if I had been drunk, of course, but I had to let them know in a super embarrassed manner what had actually happened. 

It was not too long after that experience that I decided I had enough with that relationship. 

Looking back at this experience, I don't necessarily blame him for not helping me with the car.  I blame myself for getting into a position in which I relied on an unreliable man to help me with auto maintenance- a task I thought at that time was his responsibility. 

In thinking about this life lesson, it makes me really want to reach out to my single girlfriends and tell them to never, ever do what I did. 

God didn't just give me a sign that day that I needed to end that horrible relationship, he spared my life (and the lives of others) by providing a sign for me to use as a landing pad for my little hooptie.  Who says he doesn't have a sense of humor?!