Goodbye, trusty friend!

Seven years ago, this spring, I bought my little black Honda Civic.  It was the first (and only) car I researched, picked out, purchased, and paid off entirely on my own.  In August of 2005, I loaded it up with all of my west coast memories and drove, with Heidi, through five states to get to St. Peter.  It has survived seven Minnesota winters, a year of weekend commuting to Rochester, and one awesome road trip to Kansas.  Oh, and an accident on the day I went into labor.  It's been a great car!

But, I've been reading these books, and you know how books fill you up with all these crazy ideas, right?  One book I read is called "Radical" by David Platt.  Heidi and Colin gave it to me for Christmas.  It's all about how "The American Dream" is not what God calls us to.  I also read a book called "Making Jesus Lord" by Loren Cunningham, which has a fairly similar message about how our "stuff" (and more significantly, our attachment to our stuff) can interfere with what God wants to do with out lives.  A few years ago, our small group read the book "Irresistible Revolution" by Shane Claiborne...another challenge to middle class priorities.  And our small group also went (mostly) through Financial Peace University.  And then, to top it all off, our church did a sermon series in January about finances.

Now, I should say that I think we do pretty good.  We live simply, we try to be generous with the gifts we've been given, and we don't have debt aside from the mortgage.  But, we still have excess that we really don't need.  And one of those things, I realized, is the car.  As I read through these books and listened to the sermon series, I kept feeling challenged to give up the car.  We talked about it and decided that if I got the job on campus next year, we would sell the Civic and become a one car family.  It makes sense given that I will be able to walk to work and Brian will be staying home with Maya.

In my head, I know that makes sense.  And I also have a very strong sense that it is what God wants us to do.  But it's still kind of hard.  Having a car gives me a sense of freedom, even though I only use it about once a week.  So silly, I know!  We have friends on campus who will let us borrow a car if we're in a pinch and I can always drive Brian to work and pick him up if I need the car during the day.  I'm anything but trapped.

Anyway, I was thinking that it might take awhile to find a buyer, but as it turns out, a couple in our small group were in the market for something just like the Civic.  They only have one big, gas guzzling car but he just got a job an hour away and the gas was killing them.  We mentioned that we were planning to sell the Civic on Wednesday night and this morning (3 days later!) I signed the title over.   They didn't even take it out for a test drive!  I guess it was just confirmation that it's time to let it go.  And I'm so glad it's going to a good new home!  I'm pretty sure Alex will put more miles on it this year than I did the entire seven years I owned it!


Goodbye, Civic!  Hello, one car family!