Defeat

March 21, 2019

Normally, I’m not one to give up. United Methodist pastors are required to annually submit a bio with a self-evaluation; for years I would write, “I’m a passable preacher, a terrible administrator, but there’s one quality I possess: I don’t give up.” Well, today I had to give up. Quit. 

When we bought Linda’s Ford Fusion, knowing the trade-in wouldn’t be much, we gave the old Camry to Alex and Abi, our oldest granddaughters. It had nearly 200,000 miles on it, but it’s still running strong three years later. Lately, the brakes have been a bit mushy and have a grinding sound, so son Matt and I said we’d do the job this week. He was planning on Saturday, but I had time today, so I put it in the garage and jacked it up. As usual, it’s when the work begins that the trouble starts, the trouble in this case being that no matter what we did, the old rotors wouldn’t come off. We beat it with a four pound sledge, tried driving steel woodsplitting wedges between it and the backing, but they wouldn’t budge. The only solution would be heat, but neither Matt nor myself possess acetylene. 

So we had to quit. I put new pads in the calipers and mounted them back on the old rotors. Tomorrow I’ll call the garage and take it in. Fortunately, though Alex can’t afford it, we can, and her safety is worth more than the dollars we’ll spend getting an actual mechanic to do the job. Sometimes you just have to know when it’s useless to keep fighting. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, surrender is a better option than defeat. It’s taken a lifetime, but thankfully I’m beginning to understand this. Now if I can only figure out when it’s time to give up preaching. The only problem with that is, preaching hasn’t beaten me yet. Maybe someday.