Say hello to my new car

That's right, I've acquired a new ride. A Honda CR-V from a bygone age (2000).

His name is Han "Storm Trooper" Solo, and we're already the best of chums.

You know that feeling when a car just seems to get you? When you look at a car and you just go, "Yes. This is a car I want to hang out with. This is the car."

That's the feeling I have about this new car. A feeling of rightness. A kind of kinship, like there's a piece of my soul shaped like this car--the piece that always wanted a Jeep Wrangler growing up. The piece that wakes up in the morning thinking "let's rearrange all the furniture." The piece that rolls down the windows on the way to the grocery store and wonders what challenges she'll rise to today.

That was how I felt about my first car, Sunny. 

Sunny was a banged up Pontiac Vibe with a sunroof and a 6-CD changer and a manual transmission and white hatchback spray-painted red (the paint eventually started to flake off like dried blood every time I closed the hatch). Sunny's muffler was no match for the Toyota engine that resided within his petite frame--that engine packed a punch, and one of my favorite things to do was to accelerate super fast so that when I shifted gears I felt it resonate in my bones. It made my unsuspecting friends nervous. They thought I was a bad driver, but I just loved the feeling of freedom. 

We had a bond, Sunny and I. The kind of bond that transcended boundaries, that endured even when the A/C went out one summer and I had to roll down all the windows on the way to work just to stay alive. Every time I see a Pontiac Vibe on the road I feel a pang for the first car that was my friend.

Between Sunny and Han, that sense of rightness seemed to wane. Two different cars came into my life in the interlude, my dad's old black Nissan Versa (nicknamed Sirius Black) and, after that car was totaled in an accident, the red Dodge Caliber (Cherry) I replaced it with. 

The summer after I graduated from college, the summer before I got married, I'd decided it was time to let Sunny go. So my dad traded him in to a car dealership for a new Honda and sold me his Versa. Sirius and I had a cordial relationship, helped by the fact that he was also a stick shift. He was a good car (probably the nicest one I've ever had, if we're being objective), but he was never my car. I figured he had at least a good ten years left in him. 

God, it seems, had other plans for Sirius. So it was that in October of 2019, I ended up with Cherry.

There were many things about my relationship with Cherry that were not ideal. First of all, I only got her as a replacement for Sirius after a slightly traumatic accident (no one was hurt, besides Sirius), so the subconscious residue of that stress came back every time I drove her anywhere. Secondly, there were a ton of little aggravating things wrong with her, and since I don't know anything about cars, I always felt incredibly reluctant to trust her. I almost feel bad for saying it, but I experienced no feelings except relief when I sold Cherry last week for a third of what I paid for her.

(No offense, Cherry--it wasn't your fault I hated you. May you find a better home.)

Since acquiring Cherry I'd been dreaming of a different car. I missed Sunny. I missed having fun driving. I missed feeling safe in my car, like I could trust it to have my back in a fight. After a long time praying and fretting about this, I recently decided to give it up to God and make do with my least favorite car ever, trying to simply be content that I had a car at all. And not only did I start to feel more grateful and less resentful, but God surprised me with a totally un-looked-for blessing in a new-old car. God's so good to me, and so patient with my pettiness. 

My new car once belonged to a friend from church, so I have it straight from a person I trust that he's a reliable mode of transport. Not only that, but they decided to sell him the week after I filed our tax return--perfect timing. Since Han is 21 years old, he looks like a watered-down version of a Jeep Wrangler, my childhood dream--but he's a CR-V, which I consider the ultimate ride of a cool mom. 

The turn signal clicks satisfyingly in the way that the ones in new cars don't. Looking out the windshield is like standing next to a giant aquarium. He's the car that makes me almost wish I had to drive to work every day. 

Han came along suddenly and unexpectedly, but at exactly the right time, with that trademark sense of it's-all-coming-together-ness that accompanies anything God has a hand in. It may seem a little sentimental, but when you believe there are no such things as coincidences, it's hard to be anything but.