Rental Reflections

Recently, my 17-year-old son Beck had to have his car repaired, and his insurance policy covered a rental car. However, because he’s six months shy of legal adulthood, I was the only one allowed to drive it. Beck had to make do with driving my minivan. Or as his dad used to call it, “The Shaggin’ Wagon Loser Cruiser.”

I was excited to have the new car experience without any real financial commitment. I believed I would have the superior car for the week, judging by the rental’s exterior. I placed my car keys in Beck’s hand with a smirky grin and confidently walked across the parking lot to my new wheels for the week.

Sliding into the driver’s seat, I was a little awestruck by all the extra features, especially on the dashboard. The radio came equipped with a list of preloaded nature music. The sounds of gentle raindrops dropping in sync over six Bose speakers enticed me into a Zen state of meditation through theta waves. No panic attacks in this car… or so I believed until I went to drive across the road and nearly got hit by oncoming traffic, leaving me shaky. The rental car’s acceleration was non-existent. I’d made a huge assumption. My almost costly mistake came from having a ‘Goldilocks’ mindset.

In Robert Southey’s classic fairy tale, the adaptation of Goldilocks is a naive little girl wandering the forest alone; her parents are conveniently never charged with child abuse by neglect. After Goldilocks enters the empty cottage of an anthropomorphic Mother bear, Father bear, and Baby bear, she helps herself to the family’s three chairs, three bowls of porridge, and three beds. Goldilocks wanders around giving her unsolicited Airbnb ratings for the bears’ belongings, declaring them either too hard, soft, cold, hot, or just right. When the bears come home to discover the solitary squatter trashing their house, they don’t maul her to death like normal bears; they kindly give her the disapproving side eye, and Goldilocks runs away, powered up by a free lunch and afternoon nap.

I had entered the rental car (a Hyundai Kona, if you’re curious) thinking that it would be Goldilocks-level ‘just right’. I had succumbed to the fairy tale rule of three, combined with mistaken identity. I believed the Hyundai Kona would be faster than my van because it had a sleeker design and came with that mind-blowing audio system. Wrong.

In my Goldilocks mindset, my minivan, with its sturdy and reliable 3.6-liter engine, represented my former yet familiar married life. It fits, and sometimes it doesn’t. The van says my identity is “Barry’s girl.”

Beck’s car, an Infiniti Q50, represents sexy, single, and cool, and that doesn’t feel like me very often either. His car is a cherry-bombed modified ‘whip’ with a 3.7-liter engine, producing 328 horsepower. Beck’s car clearly represents Beck. His muscles have muscles. However, Beck has brains to match his brawn. He worked an entire summer landscaping in blistering temps, cleverly saving every penny to pay for his car in cash. No car payments for him. I’m rarely allowed the privilege of driving the ‘Q-fitty,’ but when I do, Beck’s car tells me my identity is “Bond girl.”

The rental car, which I believed represented some new tenuous identity, didn’t fit AT ALL. As soon as I attempted to drive it across the street, I was thrown off by the lack of acceleration and horsepower of a 2.04-liter engine, which is why I misjudged the timing needed to cross two lanes of traffic. The rental car clearly said my identity was “Bewildered girl.”

Identity and the feelings that accompany it can be a snare. I based so much of my identity on being a wife that when I became a widow, I walked around feeling like I’d gone from sixty miles per hour to zero in a split second. I’ve spent months asking, “Who am I? Is there a “Just right?” I have felt so incredibly disoriented. Barry’s sudden death was like an amputation surgery that no one warned me I was about to have.

I want to share what I have learned. I share all the identities above at different moments, on different days. But ultimately, I am the base model of a car.

My permanent genetic identity is Child of God. All other external identities are gifts from God. I realized this after I pored over Psalm 139. This psalm of David reminds us not only of who we are, but, more importantly, of whose we are.

To borrow from David Guzik –

 It’s not just that God knows everything – He knows me.

It’s not just that God is everywhere – He is everywhere with me.

It’s not just that God created everything – He created me.

¹ You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
    you, Lord, know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in behind and before,
    and you lay your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
    too lofty for me to attain.

⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.
¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you.

I have peace in knowing that m’ ‘just rig’t’ rests within my Godly identity, not a fleeting Goldilocks identity. Widowhood does not define me, but it has and will refine me. I hope I will reflect my Father in heaven when people see me.

Beck returned the Shaggin’ Wagon Loser Cruiser at the end of the week, the seats liberally covered with cement dust and silica, as he works as a mason now. A half-eaten box of beef jerky snacks lay across the passenger seat. Evidence of his father’s work ethic and snack preferences is clearly reflected in his son, and I smiled.