A Good Smash at the Ending

Trying to contemplate timing can be perplexing.  Take our car for instance.  When we got back to the US, we knew we would spend a lot of time relying on a car, so we bought a 2003 CR-V, and it has served us very well.  2 weeks ago, we hitched a trailer to the back and drove up to Michigan, where we transferred the contents of the trailer into our team's shipping container for Burundi.  We got it done, and the next day used the trailer and hitch to go to IKEA to pick up a few things.  We turned the trailer back into U-Haul, and breathed easy.  Now, we just had to hang on for a couple weeks, until we sold the car as we moved to France on the 23rd.

The morning after dropping off the trailer, I was brushing my teeth at Aunt Karen's house, where we're staying, and I hear a loud metallic crunch.  It sounded ominously nearby, so I rushed to the door, and see an F-150 pick-up "at one" with our CR-V.  The driver begins to pull away, and I go running, toothbrush in hand, out on the lawn.

Well, there was no need to run, since it was the neighbor across the street, who wasn't used to a car there, backed his truck out of the driveway, didn't look, and crunched our driver's side.  Here's the result, including a non-operational driver's door.

We couldn't have had a kinder man smash into our parked car a week before we needed to put it up for sale.  He apologized profusely, got his insurance info, even bought us dinner, he felt so bad.  His insurance picked up a rental, and will now shell out over $2000 in body work.  We'll get the car back on Monday, with a few days to sell it.  We sort of wish he had totaled it, as then we would have "completed" our sale automatically.

Now, about timing.  I suppose it was the best of timings.  It was the worst of timings.  We really needed the CR-V for various trailer-related moving tasks, which we had just completed.  We have rarely stayed put for a few weeks this year, and yet this accident happened when we weren't going anywhere for a bit.  And the vehicle's "drive-ability" wasn't affected at all.

On the other hand, we have quite a few big things going on right now, and we don't really need a bunch of paperwork, a small Ford Focus rental, and a short period of time to sell our car.

And I think it's often like that.  Because we can never see all ends in a situation, there is always an element of choice in our reflections on the meaning, the good or the bad, of a situation.  As Christians, we believe that God is good and in control.  So we try to trust in purpose bigger than what we see.  And the point is that this integration of a worldview is unavoidable, and any claim to pure objectivism is off-base.  Even when we strive to be objective, we still have choices to make regarding how we see a situation.

And yesterday, the body shop guy called to ask how much we were selling the CR-V for.  I guess some guys in the shop are interested.  Maybe this won't turn out to be so ambiguous after all.  At least the kids got to watch a tow truck in action.