Sports Car Illusion

We have a diesel truck and a 35’ flatbed trailer that my husband uses for transporting vehicles as part of his work.  Several times per week he can be found driving anywhere from 4 to 14 hours taking vehicles from one car lot to another, from an auction to a car lot, from a repair shop to a sale lot, etc… This is typically a solo job but our son and I often join him for company and, sometimes, so that I can drive an extra vehicle – our trailer holds 2 rigs and occasionally a customer will need 3 or more relocated. To save my husband a second trip with only half a load, I’ll jump on the trip and be a driver.

Through this job I’ve had the opportunity to drive a lot of different kinds of vehicles. Most are used and it’s generally very obvious of their condition. From ranch trucks to Jeeps, from soccer-mom rigs to sports cars – typically you can look at the outside of the vehicle and know pretty well what kind of driving experience you’re going to have.

Yesterday we had 3 to pick up in a town about 90 miles away. Two went on the trailer and then my husband brought the 3^rd out for me to drive. “Sweet!” I thought as he came out driving a cute silver sports car. This was going to be a fun ride home over the mountain roads in this little hot rod!

I hopped in and was immediately met with a contradiction in terms. This sports car, that looked so lovely on the outside, was a wreck on the inside – worse than some ranch trucks I’ve driven! Cigarette burns in the seats and headliner, part of the door liner falling off, stains on the dash, and that smell… ugh, I stopped looking around. Taking off there was a terrible rattle in the dash. “Great!” I thought “This is going to be a lovely hour and a half experience.”

I spent the next several minutes negotiating traffic on my way to the road that would take me over the mountains. I tried to ignore the ick factor of where I was, ignore the rattle, and just pretend I was somewhere else. Once on the mountain road there was no traffic to preoccupy me so I started to look around – I wondered what it would take to get the inside of this car to an acceptable condition? A deep cleaning would do wonders. A few repairs and patches and this car wouldn’t be that bad. But why was it such a contradiction – that shiny, beautiful exterior and this ugly, damaged interior – what was the lesson Hashem was showing me?

I considered the concepts of taking on religious outer “garbs” without doing the required inner work first. I thought about making false fronts to others – making yourself appear bigger, better, smarter, wealthier, etc. than you actually are. I wondered about making assumptions of others based on superficial information. Then I contemplated the fact that, even as bad as it is, even as rough of a life this car has obviously had, even as filthy and damaged and worn it is… it was once beautiful and with some work it could be beautiful again.

Isn’t that a wonderful gift that Hashem has given us all? No matter how filthy and damaged we are from this world, how far from our origins we’ve fallen, and despite the choices we’ve made in the past – we can come to our loving Father with all of our brokenness… and perhaps because of our brokenness we can truly do the work of teshuva – cleaned and repaired, wiser and more humble, strengthened with emuna and encouraged with a bonded relationship with our Creator – we can make a fresh start. Through the gift of hitbodedut we can make this fresh start over and over and over again.

I rolled down the windows and began signing my hour of hitbodedut at the top of my lungs into the wind that whipped through while the little sports car zipped up the mountain roads like it was fresh out of the factory.

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Jennifer invites you to participate in a regularly held Noahide on-line study group that reviews the garden series books of Rabbi Arush. You can contact her at jenniferjwoodward@gmail.com for dates and times.