It may look like disaster. It may look like it’s gotten worse. It may even look like there is no hope and we might as well just take it to the scrap yard. But I know better.

I know better because I see the work Brandon does every day. I’ve seen him remove bolts and cut off large metal bars. I’ve watched him meticulously examine each part to see which ones he can salvage, and diligently search for the best replacements for the ones he can’t. He has sanded and welded and gashed open a couple of fingers. He has taken parts that didn’t quite need repair yet and fixed them anyway. He’s even doing a little customizing and painting some things while he’s at it. (For example, our turbo is now bright blue, which is suh-weet.)

Every day our boys run to the window and say, “Uh oh! Car is broke. Daddy fix it.” They have no idea what’s actually going on out there, but they know their daddy will fix it.

In so many ways, this car is a perfect picture of our life right now. The wreck that led to this… mess… also led to the end of what we thought would be a significant season in our lives. Later the same week of the wreck, he was let go from his job for reasons that still don’t really make sense to us. We were a single income family, 200 miles from our closest relatives, and our entire network was connected to that job. We moved two states with an 11-month-old baby, two dogs, and a 9-months-pregnant me for that job. We were invested, and we thought it was for the long haul. But that was not the case. It’s been almost 3 months, and much like the car, our life is in pieces. No new job, no prospects, no nothing. Bolts everywhere, insides strewn about. But I realized today — maybe there’s work being done that we can’t see. It looks beyond repair because I can’t see all the little bits that are being done, that need to be done, before all the big pieces can be put back. Parts that have to be fixed before they’re put back. Parts that weren’t broken yet, but would have been, so they’re being switched out. Maybe even a little bit of customization. I’ll start to notice once the big parts are being put back — the radiator, the bumper cover. There’s just a lot that has to be done before we can get there.

Maybe our life looks like a disaster and all of our parts are on the ground and we have no idea how to begin putting ourselves back together again.

But maybe it’s ok. Daddy fix it.

Tags: emotional fear hope struggle