Hello, again! I've been away from The Spill for a bit. This should explain ...
re·pair (rE-pâr)
v. re·paired, re·pair·ing, re·pairsv.tr.
1. To restore to sound condition after damage or injury; fix: repaired the broken watch.
2. To set right; remedy: repair an oversight.
3. To renew or revitalize.
4. To make up for or compensate for (a loss or wrong, for example)*
My computer has been with Noel-the-Fix-It-Guy for the last week. My Mac slowed to the point of crawling, then stopped. The series of posts I had planned to run this week in this blog is being held hostage in a too-often overheated hard drive. The hard drive will be replaced. The goth hearse driver story will be unlocked. The story will eventually be released from it's cyber prison, and told. But first, my computer needs repair.
.
My car is also in repair. Today, I dropped it off at the Auto Body shop and was given a rental in exchange. The crashes are finally getting fixed. During a freak October snow storm, I
slid into a fence post (click the link to read the whole story). I crunched the front driver's side. Then, 6 days later, a friend backed out of a parking space and into my back driver's side. Two wrecks in a week. My little Pontiac Vibe looked like it had been slapped around. But only on one side. You wouldn't know anything was wrong just looking at it from the passenger side. Separate insurance deductibles, claims, and adjusters have all fallen in line, so this week is repair week. The busted side and the 'normal' side will get back in harmony.
The car will get a salvaged door, and a new fender, tail light, back quarter panel thing, and molded runner, and a whole paint job, and ... well, the list is long. Our repair man ordered all the pieces ahead of time and had them ready. It appeared more like a scheduled surgery than a fixer-upper. I've got to be honest, my personal vibe has been crashed and in need of surgical repair both literally and figuratively ... many times. And, I'm not just talking about my car.
The Other Vibe. I have been married 20 years. My husband, Steve, is the other half of my brain. We are good friends. We are an awesome team. I rely on him for directions when I'm lost, a man's perspective on parenting boys, and overall, a better saner approach to life when I'm stuck in a fog. I can't imagine my life without him.
That said, we are normal. We have dysfunctions. And we've taken many years to learn a dance that we both hate to get into... and yes, we get into it. I say that thing, which cues him to say and feel that way, which causes him to respond this way, which causes me to respond that way ... step to the left, step to the right, twirl and repeat in a circle. The bad dance is one big crashed vibe.
The Dance. For the last couple of years, Steve & I have been working to get out of the bad dance. We have friends that listen to us and tell us the truth. We have a counsellor who hands us insights now and again. And we have a dogged determination to stay in this commitment -- this God covenant -- till death do us part. And some days, when the music for our bad dance starts playing, it's a white-knuckled promise to keep. But, we are in fact learning a new dance -- figuratively and literally.
We are learning to dance western. And that will be a story for another time. But for now I'll just say, every Sunday night we go down to "Cowboys" and learn a couple more sequences of the two-step. While we are learning to follow and lead on the dance floor, we are re-learning a new way to dance in life. We are in repair.
According to the dictionary a "repair" is an action which restores, renews, or revitalizes something after damage or injury.
This week, I'm seeing that the repair of relationships is like the hard drive repair on my computer, or the messed-up driver's side of my car.
Like my car, it's possible for one entire side of something to look completely "normal" and fine to people who are just passengers. At the same time, unbeknownst to anyone else, the drivers can be traveling together, totally crashed, damaged, needing replaced parts. Lopsided dissonance like this has to be admitted and repaired before real harmony can happen.
Like my computer, it's important to get into the guts of how things got burned-up and broken, so life stories can be unlocked, spoken, and shared.
This assortment of broken things teach something about where we've been. And none of it was my plan. Usually, the repair feels imposed not chosen; like the careening slide before the crash. It's like God just keeps overheating the hard drive, and icing the road, so we are forced into places of repair. And, I have to say this process with Steve definitely feels like a place where we've been led through many events we wouldn't have chosen, in order to learn how to dance a new dance.
Repaired = Restored. Renewed. Revitalized. And perhaps that's exactly why it's all worth it.
"See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."
~God.
The Bible
Isaiah 43:19
Food for Thought:
- Do you have something in your life that needs to be restored?
- How can you start -- or restart -- the repair process today?
Maybe you already know what needs to happen next. Go for it. But, in case you're dealing with something that feels overwhelming, sometimes the best place to start is a simple prayer. Ask God for the next obvious step. And watch for it.
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*
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 6th Edition 2003. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003
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