Lessons Learned on the Road

Given my ‘gift’ of spiritual analogies, I’m sure you knew I’d come away from my almost-drive to scout camp with a couple of new thoughts.  After all—I had over 5 uninterrupted hours to think!

 

1.  Be prepared.  I never bought a car charger for the cell phone I have now.  I just never got around to it.  It stayed charged for long enough that I didn’t think I needed it.  It wasn’t even the money—I knew that I could probably get one cheap on ebay.  I just didn’t make the effort. 

I wonder how many thing I really should have to be prepared in case of a disaster or emergency that I’ve just not bothered to get.  Things that I don’t need on a daily basis, and might never need.  Things that in that one moment I would be so glad to have…

 

2.  Take care of the problem now.  The starter on the van had been giving us problems off and on for months.  We got a new battery and that didn’t fix the problem.  We knew something was going on.  Both of us had had moments when we were sure that the van wasn’t going to start again.

I know that the van could have broken down at a worse time and in a worse place.  The starter could have stopped working 48 hours later, on a hot Sunday evening with the whole family in the car on the way to our family reunion at the beach.  Then it would have been even more difficult to figure out how to get it fixed, and even more uncomfortable and inconvenient.  So the timing, while not ideal, still qualifies as a tender mercy in my book.

It would have been so much easier to just deal with the starter sometime in the last two months.  (Cheaper too!)  We had plenty of warning.  Lots of time to deal with the problem before it was a crisis.  And yet we didn’t, and boy did we regret it.

I think this applies in many areas of our lives.  In personal issues, parenting decisions, health, etc.  We’re usually so much better off if we just nip the problem in the bud, rather than letting it develop into a full-fledged breakdown.

 

3.  Keep the phone charged.  (This idea reminded me a lot of a blog post I wrote last year when we were in Utah about my non-functioning gas gauge.)  I used to charge my cell phone faithfully every night.  But lately I’ve been a bit careless about charging it.  I’ve just left it in my purse, or sitting by my computer, justifying my choice with the thought that the battery lasts a long time and it’s very unlikely to run down and cause me a problem.

As I drove and drove (and drove) the other night I felt the spirit clearly showing me the parallel in my life.  I have had times when I recharge my spiritual battery regularly and thoroughly.  Right now my recharging is a little more sporadic.  Sometimes I have a great scripture study session and I can tell that my battery is in good shape for the day.  Sometimes I’m a little more rushed and am not “plugged in” for very long at all.  Sometimes it’s more like a drive-by charging than anything else.

The problem is that I have no way of predicting when I will actually need that full spiritual-battery charge.  I don’t know which day I would have been able to share a part of my testimony with one of my kids if I had been in a place to hear the spirit.  I don’t know when I will have an experience that would have gone better if my spiritual battery was full.  And I don’t know which day will include a moment that might be spiritually damaging if I’m running on empty at the moment.

That’s why I should just recharge every single day.

How many ways, how many times, does the spirit have to tell me this?  I am obviously a slow learner.  And grateful that the message keeps coming…

[Please know that I believe that at different times in our lives different amounts of recharging are necessary.  When I had little babies I was doing good to read a verse or two.  But that is not my life anymore, and I need to do a better job with my priorities!]