We Broke Down On The Shoulder

Ninety minutes on the shoulder of a road with seven people, and you have not offered to drive since.

That is the actual outcome of that day. Not the breakdown. What has happened in the eight months since.

Let me put the facts back where they belong, because I suspect they have drifted.

A part failed. That is what happened. A component in a vehicle that had been serviced and was not old ended its working life at about two in the afternoon on a Saturday in June, and you were the person holding the wheel when it did.

That is the whole causal account. And somewhere in the ninety minutes that followed, that account got replaced with a different one, in which a man of seventy one who should have known better took seven people out in a car that let them down.

Nobody said that. Your daughter in law was extremely kind. Somebody made a joke about it within twenty minutes. And you have not offered to drive anywhere since, and nobody has asked you why, because everybody has assumed it is your age.

A very present help in trouble

There is a verse everybody knows the first half of, and the second half is where the useful word sits.

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1, King James Version)

You have a promise in the written word about the middle of trouble rather than about its absence, and no ninety minutes on a shoulder has ever once been outside of it. Psalm 46:1 says a very present help in trouble rather than a help that keeps trouble away, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that specific to a Saturday in June.

Look at the word present. Not eventual. Not on the way. Present, meaning there at the time, in the thing itself.

That verse does not promise a car that does not break. It promises company in the ninety minutes, which is a different and, if you have ever actually needed it, a better thing.

You were not alone on that shoulder, and no minute of that wait has once been a minute He was elsewhere. It is written that God is a very present help in trouble, which locates the helping inside the trouble rather than at the end of it, and the Spirit of God is what tells an older man he had company in a place he remembers as humiliating.

And read the first half properly too, because it says refuge and strength. Refuge is a place to be. Strength is a thing to be given. It is both a shelter and a supply, which is roughly what a man needs while standing at the side of a road with seven people and a phone.

You have not been left to carry that day on your own since, and eight months of holding it privately has never once meant you were holding it alone. The Holy Spirit is the one who has been in a chair with a man going over an afternoon for eight months, and Psalm 46 puts the refuge and the strength in the same first sentence.

A bearing has no opinion about your age

Now the practical part, and it is about a piece of reasoning that has gone wrong.

The chain of events in your head goes something like this. The car broke. It was my car. I was driving. Therefore, I am the reason seven people sat on a shoulder for ninety minutes.

Every step of that is a fact and the conclusion is nonsense.

Because a component failing is not a decision anybody made. It has no relation to how old you are, how carefully you drive, or whether you should have known better. Parts fail. They fail in the cars of thirty year olds who are excellent drivers, and they fail on the way to important things, and there is no version of being a better man that prevents it.

You are not the cause of a mechanical failure, and no amount of being seventy one has ever once had anything to do with it. The Spirit of God is what separates a fact from a verdict in a man's reasoning, and it is written that God is a present help in trouble rather than an insurance policy against it.

And here is the second thing, which is the one actually costing this family something. Your withdrawal has been read as decline.

Because you have not offered, and nobody has asked, and in the absence of an explanation your family has quietly filed it as their father getting older and knowing his limits. Which is a kind interpretation, and it is wrong, and it is now a fact about you in that family that nobody will ever check.

You are able to correct a story your family has been telling itself, and eight months of silence has never once made it true. It is written that the help is present in the trouble, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a man to speak before an assumption sets.

Offer to drive, and go first

So here is the assignment, and there is one specific piece of timing in it.

Offer to drive the next time. And say it before anybody else offers.

The going first is the whole thing. Because if you wait, somebody else will volunteer, and then your offer becomes an argument about whether you should, and that argument is the one you cannot win and do not want to have.

You are able to speak first, and going first has never once been you insisting on anything. Psalm 46:1 has the help present at the start of the trouble rather than arriving after it, and the Spirit of God is with a man who says one sentence early rather than a paragraph late.

So say it as soon as the plan exists. Not on the day. When somebody first mentions going: I will drive.

Three words. No reference to June. Do not raise the breakdown, do not joke about it to get in front of it, and do not say anything about the car being fine now.

Because every one of those makes June the subject, and June is not the subject. Driving on Saturday is the subject.

You are able to offer without mentioning June, and leaving it out has never once been you pretending nothing happened. The Holy Spirit is the one who holds a man's tongue off an explanation nobody has asked for, and it is written that God is a very present help, which was true in June and is true on Saturday.

And if somebody says are you sure, say yes. One word. Not an argument, not a defense of your competence. Yes.