Brakes

Our first home after getting married was a 47 feet long by 7 feet wide mobile home owned by a retired missionary couple. Yes, that is smaller than many recreational vehicles today. In an era long before “tiny homes,” we had a tiny trailer.

The retired missionaries from Nigeria called it their “doll house,” and it was parked in their back yard. Income from the rent for this trailer and another one in their backyard provided supplemental income to their meager retirement funds.

Our rented mobile home was located next to a very busy freight train track. Every time a train passed by the whole trailer would vibrate so much that we had to remove the only lamp we owned from the small table where it was perched or the vibrations from the train would cause the lamp to fall to the floor. Before going to sleep or when we left the trailer to go to school or work, we would remove the lamp from the table to keep it from crashing on the floor.

The 329 square feet included a tiny bedroom and bathroom and a kitchen open to the small living area. The bed was built into a corner of the bedroom and it was five feet long. Passage into the bedroom was between the foot of the bed and the wall, so that left less than two feet to walk into the bedroom. We were smaller then, but I was still six feet tall, so Cheryl would have to make up the bed leaving an extra foot of bed coverings folded in such a way that when I stretched out, I would not pull the covers down to our waists.

But this was our first home, and we began to use Cheryl’s gift of hospitality to host friends in our home. Our college friends loved to drop by to visit or to get a free meal.

 The trailer had a large towing tongue on the front of it. My best friend from college, Denny, owned an old 50s bright orange Nash Rambler sedan. We had some good times cruising through the small town in that old car, but it was not dependable in many respects. For example, it did not have a working emergency brake.

We knew Denny had arrived to visit us when we heard a loud noise and felt a rocking of the trailer. Our mobile home was on a slope, so Denny would have to bump his Nash up against the tow tongue of the trailer, and he usually misjudged the distance from the tongue to his bumper, so the Nash would give a big bump to the tongue.

Brakes are an important part of a vehicle. Likewise, God provided us with different kinds of brakes in our lives. Our intelligence brakes keep us from saying stupid things—sometimes! Those brakes help us to use correct and polite grammar. Although, I think today that some people have zero intelligence brakes as I hear such filthy language being spoken loudly by people who don’t care what other people think of their stupidity.

Our emotional brakes keep us from doing things that we know we should not be doing—like when someone cuts you off in traffic and makes you slow down and even run off the road. Our emotional brakes keep us from doing what we are thinking and wanting to do. These brakes also control our reactions. For example, I can cry over a sad story or movie or in thinking about how I miss family and friends who have passed away, but Cheryl rarely cries. She has deep emotions, but she and I just express them differently. She has power brakes, but I have to pump my manual emotional brakes to get them to work.

We have physical brakes, and some of us do not use them as wisely as others. Fact: as we age our bodies have declining capabilities. Supposition for me: I still feel like I have the physical stamina of a 50-year-old. So, when I am playing pickleball, I go for every shot like I was fifty instead of 75. That’s why I am doing physical therapy on my shoulder now, and that’s why I take an extra strength Tylenol before going to bed each night for my hip pain. I am working really hard on exercising my physical brakes to match my age so that I can keep my body in one piece for a few more years. Darn that competitiveness!

 God has provided us with spiritual brakes. In order to optimally exercise these brakes, we must know who is in control of our lives. Many people have forgotten that nothing happens by chance. God is in control, and He has a plan for every person on the face of the earth.

Failing to apply our spiritual brakes can result in a downward spiritual spiral bound for a collision. Sometimes God allows us to come to a collision in life to teach us how to apply our spiritual brakes in life choices and decisions.

I love what I Corinthians 1:25 says about how we rationalize that we are smart enough without God: “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”