I don’t believe in coincidence. I think that everything we experience is a way to teach us a lesson. The problem is figuring out what that lesson is. Right now, my wife and I are dealing with car problems of gargantuan proportions. Since the middle of last week of July, my wife’s van has been in the shop ten times. My old car (an ’89) has been in the shop five times. And even the new car (well, new to us—it’s still ten years old) has been in the shop once—and we’ve only owned it for two weeks.

It started in June, actually, when a deer jumped onto the roof of my wife’s van. I know that sounds bizarre, but she was driving to work in a pouring rainstorm through a large cut in a hillside. She heard a large bang that scared the daylights out of her but didn’t know what had happened until she got to work, looked at the roof and saw it had been dented. We both originally thought that a large rock or tree branch had fallen from the hillside in the rain. It wasn’t until her boss came home and started looking at the damage that he found deer hair embedded in the weather-stripping around the sliding door. But we couldn’t get the work done until the end of July. Turns out the damage was a lot more extensive than we thought, but it was covered by her insurance (thankfully—since it totaled more than $2700). The next week, we took the vehicle in for a recall: they installed shields around the large springs that are on the front wheels. Apparently, if the springs break, there’s a good chance, without the guards, that your tire will be slashed. We were lucky: when the spring broke six months ago, it didn’t damage the tire. While it was in the shop, we had them look at the locks: all of which were “frozen”. Turns out they were just really dirty. The soaked them all and cleaned them and we had them replace a faulty switch that kept the interior lights on for hours after you got out of the car. The next week, we had to take it back to the people who fixed the roof: they hadn’t lined up the roof vents properly and no ventilation was getting to the back seats. (No charge on that repair, of course.

Then we took my car to get it inspected—a yearly chore in my state. Before they even put it up on the rack, they told me it would fail. The culprit was nothing mechanical: it was rust. In this state, you can’t have any holes in the body—in case someone gets some part of their body or clothing stuck in it and you drive off and drag them behind/beside you. My car had a whole lot of holes. So we found an autobody shop that would repair the damage to pass inspection—but they wouldn’t guarantee that it would pass inspection the following year. While checking out the rust damage with the guy at the shop, I noticed that my front tires were in bad need of replacement. So once I had it back from the body shop, I had to take it to the tire man to get two new front tires. Then over to the shop for inspection—only to find out that I had busted bushing on the sway arm (a component of the suspension) that needed to be replaced before it would pass inspection.

A couple weeks later, on her way home from work, she said she lost her power steering, that the van had started to overheat and that the alternator light had come on. Turns out that two pulleys had frozen and caused the serpentine belt to jump off track. In her vehicle, one serpentine belt runs everything, from the air conditioner to the power steering pump to the water pump. Fortunately we didn’t have to replace the belt, just the two pulleys. But we had to pay for the tow too.

The day after we had her van back, I went to the post office. When I came out, my car wouldn’t start. I got a jump from a nice lady who called her husband to bring the jumper cables. By the time I got home, I realized my alternator wasn’t charging my by battery anymore. I was able to drive it to the shop (although barely) so we didn’t have to pay for any tow. But we did have to pay for the new alternator.

One weekend, my son took his brother to the local video store to rent movies for the weekend. When they came home, my youngest came running in saying “Hey, Mom! Your car’s smoking out of both wheel wells!” A quick trip outside quickly revealed a puddle forming under the car: power steering fluid. A line had rusted through. The line was very hard to get to and was very labor intensive. And another tow. (Insert cash register sounds here.)

Two days before we were to leave on a cross-country trip, we were taking my wife’s van to get an oil change. We stopped to get gas and as I was filling up the tank and washing the windows, I noticed that the front tires were bald on the outer edge. We’d tried to get an alignment the when we’d put on new front tires the previous summer, but were told that the tire dealer didn’t have the tools do so it since it required removing spot welds. We knew if we put new tires on again without an alignment (the vehicle is a ’97 and had never been aligned) that we’d just chew through them as fast as we had these ones. So we took it to a dealer, bit the bullet and had them do the alignment. Only to find out that we needed to replace one of the tie rod ends as well. (Insert more cash register here.) After the alignment, we had to get two new front tires and then the oil change—which soon turned into flushing the transmission too. (Apparently that had never been done in the 6+ years of the cars existence either. Insert more cash register sounds.)

Our trip was uneventful. But within days after we got back, my wife notices a grinding when she turned the wheel. We took it to the shop yet again (we’re now on a first name basis with both the shop foreman and the mechanic who did the work on our car) and found that the power steering pump was shot as was the other tie rod end. We should have known when we were told it would take two hours and it took four that something hadn’t gone right, but after wasting the whole day sitting in the waiting room at the shop, we went home after dropping a large chunk of change in their cash register.

The very next morning, my wife calls me from work. She said something’s wrong with the van, you’re going to have to come here. As I pulled up to her work, I saw a puddle underneath the car: coolant. I popped the hood and found that the serpentine belt had been slowly walking off the alternator pulley and was sliced almost halfway through. The loose piece had knocked the overflow tube from the radiator off the overflow tank, which is why there was coolant everywhere. The shop ate the cost of the tow and the cost of the first new serpentine belt they put on that came off five minutes later. After putting on another new belt, they ran the car for almost two hours and it didn’t come off again, so they sent it home with us, even though no one knew why it had come off in the first place.

Knowing we were going to have to probably repair the rust on my car again next year, we decided we’d look for another second car. As we were driving to Sam’s Club (a membership warehouse), we passed a car parked in a restaurant lot with a for sale sign on it. Same kind of car I already had but five years newer. We called to find out about price, etc., and agreed to meet the seller the next morning and went home with an agreement to purchase the car the next day, once the banks were open. On the way home, honest to God, the car died on me. Did you ever drive a stick shift and forget to push in the clutch when you came to a stop? You know how the car shakes violently and then dies? That’s what it did. I thought maybe it was simply because it hadn’t been driven for a while, so I didn’t’ call the sellers. But when it did it again four more times the next day, I called. They very graciously told us to take it to their mechanic and they’d have the problem fixed. Fortunately, it was a relatively easy fix: there is a lock on the torque converter and it was getting stuck. The mechanic simply disconnected it. So now we had three cars that were all running perfectly! And then this morning, my wife started to back out of the driveway, and pulled immediately back in. She said she’d heard a loud clunk, then all the warning lights had come on. She took my car and drove off to work while I called the mechanic and had him send the tow truck. He hasn’t called yet with the bad news, but he did say it was two quarts low on oil (this mechanic did not do the oil change—that was at a Midas shop—same people who put the power steering pump on) and that the serpentine belt had come off again. The belt would explain the warning lights, but not the low oil. We’ve paid more in car repairs in the last two months than we paid for the new used car. And I find myself asking “Why?” What lesson is it that I have to learn? What lesson is it that my wife has to learn? My first thought is that I need to learn to let go of the old and worn out and to embrace the universe and manifest myself a new car and the means to pay for it. My second thought is that this is a demonstration to my wife that God always provides—always meets our needs. Neither of us is really sure where we came up with the money to pay for all those repairs, but we did. Even at a time when we were planning our cross-country trip and saving money for our trip to Canada to get married (legally this time.) Maybe it’s a lesson in learning when to say when. Maybe it’s trying to tell me that I need to get out more. Or maybe exercise more: you know, if I don’t get “moving around” more, my own “method of transportation” is going to break down. Maybe it’s a warning against taking long trips, yet we just took a 3000-mile trip and had no mechanical problems. Maybe it’s to teach me to simply laugh at the absurdity of life sometimes. Maybe it’s a warning against relying too much on technology.

Whatever the lesson, it appears I haven’t yet learned it because it’s still happening. Maybe the lesson is that whatever happens, happens. And I’m not supposed to learn it. Or maybe the lesson is that dogs don’t have tentacles and it really IS all just bad luck or coincidence....

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