Last week our van was in a little mishap. It is really a teeny dent on the driver's side fender, but that little dent caused it to bow in the back, making it hard to open the driver's door (actually more damage was done in opening the door--pushing the fender in a bit at the back) and the paint was peeling. Obviously it had to be repaired.
Justin is pretty good with cars and after the sticker shock from the body shop he opted to put on a new fender himself. It is just a bunch of bolts, right? Oh, and a lot of time.
He spent the day Saturday removing the fender (by way of the tire, hood, headlight, and side view mirror, as there were bolts to remove under all of those items). He begins to install the new fender and then he finds that one of those places that bolts run through has been bent a bit. Just enough that he can't attach the new fender that was already in place.
Looking at it now, with the new fender on, all you can see is that it needs a little paint. The van looks like it has been repaired, but underneath the truth is that if you tried to drive the van at highway speed the pretty new fender might well be ripped away, showing that bent piece of metal that is hidden.
How often do we try to fix ourselves? Sometimes we can take care of it ourselves, but other times we have no idea how broken we are until we pull back that exterior. Then we can either put a new cover over ourselves and pretend that all is well until life speeds past us and rips that new skin off or we can look at ourselves and see we are broken past our ability to fix it and take our hearts to the One who is skilled in these repairs. We couldn't see that when the project began: we had to start somewhere, but now we know. Thankfully we have a gracious Father in heaven who will take care of us, take off that band-aid that did nothing but hide the ugliness, and truly repair us. After all, He sent His Son here so we can be fixed up forever.
It costs more, it takes longer, but the right fix will be better in the end.
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