Cars make giving talks complicated

So I was asked to give a talk in church today.

In case of any readers who are not Mormons/LDS, in our church members of the congregation are asked to prepare talks for church instead of having one person give a sermon every week. I was a little surprised to be asked so soon upon moving into the area, but I agreed readily enough.

This morning I decided to wait and travel by car to church with my roommates rather than leaving early to walk to church. I usually would rather walk or bike (surprising no one who knows me) but I'd had my roommates get after me (in a friendly way) for not riding together with them so I decided to be social and join the car group.

Except we were getting really close to time to leave and neither of my roommates were stirring. When it got to the point of "leave now or be late" I discovered, to some embarrassment, that one roommate was out of town (I'd forgotten) and one had texted me two hours before to say she was too sick to come to church that day. So I dashed down the stairs as quickly as I could manage in heels to get to my car so I could get to church on time.

Well, despite the fact that I was running close to the wire I made especially sure to look behind me to make sure I wasn't backing up into anything. Apparently I was looking that direction too much because I then heard a sickening "crunch". The side of my car had just come into contact with a concrete pole.

As I pulled out of there, I was hoping that maybe it would just be a little scratch. But to my panicking eyes, a large section of my car was dented inward and scraped white. The damage was only cosmetic-- everything still worked-- but ugly enough to be distressing. And now I was definitely going to be late for church.

I saw a definite look of relief on the bishop's face when I slid into the chapel during the opening hymn, so I'm sure I caused at least some concern with my tardiness. Sitting down, I sighed and thought that this was turning out to be kind of a lousy day.

During the sacrament, though, I felt inspired to make some last minute changes to my talk--mentioning what had happened to my car. The topic of my talk was on fearing God more than fearing man, and I ended up tying the incident to the fact that superficial things-- what we look like, what we own, what damage our cars have taken, etc --don't matter as much as the way we live and how well we cling to the Gospel. I guess it went over well because for the rest of church people kept coming up to me and saying, "I liked your talk, and I'm so sorry about your car."

Actually, after church when I'd had the chance to calm down, I found that the damage to my car wasn't as bad as it had seemed during that first crisis moment. I don't know, here's a photo so you can judge for yourself, but it really could have been worse:

Well, I'd better be OK with it because it is not currently in my budget to fix it and since it's just cosmetic it's not urgent either.

And, all in all, it's ended up being a good day. I really like my ward up here; it's a smaller ward, but I do better socially in smaller groups, and everyone has been very welcoming and friendly. I met a girl who is currently meeting with the missionaries and I sort of invited myself to join in on a lesson this week. We had a "linger longer" (group lunch after church) and I found myself at a table that spent the entire time discussing twilight zone episodes so you know this is a group of people I can feel comfortable with.

So I guess the moral of the story is that, yes, cars do make life complicated, but that doesn't mean that they have to ruin your day.