THE DAY THE WHEELS FELL OFF

WINSDAY WISDOM 303

Have you ever been rolling along feeling pretty good about life when suddenly the wheels fell off?

I talked to a new friend who was having his best professional year. That was late summer last year. In September, he had eye surgery which required a three-week recovery. An injury during his first week back at work necessitated knee replacement and another several weeks of physical therapy.

He contracted Covid before Thanksgiving with some complications. Just before Christmas, he ran a late-night errand to set out the stinky trash forgotten by his vacationing son who lived nearby.

He got out of bed dressed in his Pj bottoms, a light jacket, and flipflops for his short trip of mercy. On the way, his car hit a deer, sending the vehicle tumbling down an incline. He waited in the wintry cold for a police and wrecker. The Pjs and flipflops were a nice touch which led to a sobriety check. The car was totaled but he was not seriously injured. The real hurt came later when he was informed his auto insurance had been canceled while he was in the hospital. 

Post-Christmas, he had a bad case of flu that sent him back into the hospital. On the last day of the year, a nurse delivered his wife’s newly filed divorce papers. Somewhere, the wheels fell off.

Can you identify with the feeling of the shock?

I had a different experience. It was the day the wheels fell off….literally.

As I turned the corner in my car, I marveled at the strange sight of a large tire rolling past my sideview mirror and into the road lane ahead of me. I think I was in shock when Rafe, my passenger, mused that he thought the wandering wheel was from our vehicle.

I can honestly say that the only time I had witnessed something similar was when a high school friend and I changed the flat tire on the band director’s car. That was my first experience at tightening the lug nuts on a wheel. We watched the back tire wildly wobble as the car pulled away. It was the first time I saw a wheel fall off while the car was in motion. It seemed funny at the time.

I guess our band director did not think it was very hilarious. As I was introduced at the next school football pep rally, he had the band play Taps instead of the school fight song.

When the wheels fell off this time, it was very embarrassing. Rafe came to visit me in Tulsa. He is one of my preacher sons. We planned to grab something to eat and then see a Tulsa University football practice.

He marveled at how well my 2000 GMC Yukon had been holding up. The SUV had been a generous gift from the Shreveport church I pastored for twenty-three years. The vehicle was a Godsend. It made many family trips to Tulsa and Florida through the years.

The Yukon was also a beautiful reminder of God’s resurrection power. It just kept going and going, just like the Energizer bunny. Snow, wind, ice, beach sand, storms, and blistering heat never stopped it from reaching its destination. It has even been stolen twice and crashed
twice, only to find its way back home.

It is now a twenty-four-year-old model that can still outrun some of the fancy speed cars racing down the turnpike. Not that I have ever proven that to an arrogant young man who flipped me off.

The odometer currently records just a little over 418,000 miles. That is right. 418k. The thieves left it in poor outward condition. Front glass cracked. Bumper dented. Both front door handles hang loose. The interior is faded and torn. The exterior paint is showing its age. The Michelin tires are worth more than the car.

It looks and feels a lot like its owner. Because of insurance, I am worth more dead than alive. I hope my faith will hold up as well as the Yukon.

During Rafe’s visit, there was a strange grinding sound coming from the left front tire. I had taken the SUV to the auto shop for an inspection the previous day. The mechanic said it looked as if a bearing needed to be replaced.

I drove Rafe to see the new Riverwalk Park. The grinding sound caused me to pull over into the parking lot. I decided to continue the trip to the University campus to get there in time for practice before I called for a wrecker to tow the car to the garage.

As we made the last right turn in front of the campus, there was a strange sound, then a thump. Rafe and I watched as the front left tire slowly rolled past us.

The wheel had come off…literally.

Rafe remarked as if he were the WKRP news reporter, Les Nessman, describing the infamously ill-fated turkey drop from the helicopter onto the Pinedale shopping center parking lot. “Oh, the humanity.” Instead of the Les line, “The turkeys are crashing onto the ground like bags of wet cement,” Rafe reported, “I think that is your tire rolling down the street.” 

I sighed. “Yep, I believe it is.”

Rafe continued to gaze in astonishment at the wheel on its breakaway roll into freedom. “I have never seen anything like that before.”

The rolling tire made its way down Eleventh Street before ending its journey on an adjacent sidewalk. The SUV was now down on its left front scraping along the road. Sparks flying. Spectators gaping with open mouths. Fingers pointing.

I drove the car into the parking lot of a closed sandwich shop. I retrieved the wheel and then went to visit the players at practice. I left Rafe in the car, laughing and hiding his face from the embarrassment.

“Till the wheels fell off” is an idiomatic expression. I certainly get the “idiot” part. The phrase generally refers to some difficult problem that ends up with disastrous results.  

My free-wheeling tire would qualify as a difficult problem with disastrous results.

The metaphor. “Keep going til the wheels fall off,” can be used in a positive manner to describe persistence and relentless determination until the action can no longer be done. A never-quit attitude.

The phrase. “He should have quit before the wheels fell off,” can also be used as a negative expression regarding someone’s stubborn unwillingness to stop what he is doing even when faced with disastrous consequences, often sudden failure.

Again, in this true story, the idiom and the idiot have both been appropriately identified.

Have you ever had one of those days where the wheels just fell off?

I am sure you have…or will have one in the future. What can you do?

Life is life…for each one of us.

We all love the mountaintop times. The highlight moments and celebratory gold stars are welcomed visitors. We smile. We sing. We dance. We live as if those moments will never end. In reality, they are few and far between.

We are better acquainted with the low moments, even if they are scarce. Grief. Loneliness. Defeat. Loss. Suffering. Financial crisis. Personal disappointments. Private pain. Those days do not last forever; they just feel as if they do.

Most of life is spent coasting down the road. We hope to run into a high note or discover a hidden oasis. We fear the hard bumps in the road. We never expect the wheels to really fall off. When they do, then what?

When the wheels fall off, God is there. When the trial is beyond what you can handle, God is there. When the darkness hides all hope, God is there. Even when you have made a mess of your life by foolish decisions or indecision, God is still there.

God specializes in giving help and hope to those who lost their wheels and wrecked their lives.

Consider one of the most messed up lives in all the historical encounters with Jesus. At his worst moment, the world just called the misery man, “Legion.” (You can find his story in Mark 5:1-20.)

He was a man well-acquainted with the drama and conflict of a messed-up life. In fact, in the soap opera world, he would be a mega star.

His wheels fell off. The result is more important than the reason. Legion lost everything that mattered in life. He destroyed his family, shipwrecked his career, and blew up his friendships. His good name became the stuff of demons.

The slippery slope story became a nightmare. He was a physical monster, an emotional wreck, and a social outcast. The plot development was saturated with drama inside and outside.

Frightened people practiced social distancing from his personal pandemic. He was Sleepless in Graveyards and Hopeless in Seattle or any other place on the planet.

Legion’s life was stranger than fiction. The stories about him were a bigtime ratings-grabber. He was a mean, mad man, like a scary monster in the movies, only the tales were real.

The consensus opinion saw him as beyond all hope.

Jesus brought His disciples to love this scary man who was no longer loved or loving. That encounter transformed Legion’s heart, soul, and mind.

God’s love gives hope to soap opera lives. Many lonely people go through life like Legion dwelling in the graveyards of greed, gripes, and grumbling. Their wheels fall off. They are among the Walking Dead who fight with family members, wrestle with addictions, and star in social struggles.

They feel desperately alone, alienated, afraid, and ashamed. They hurt and hate. Self-destructive bitterness and self-inflicted misery know them well.

Legion was the poster child of a soap opera world without God, without help, without hope. He was driven by the unrest that was in his soul, running in never-ending circles of nothing but misery. Socially alienated, spiritually unfit, culturally unacceptable.

It was humanly impossible to love him. He was the most hated soap opera victim/villain of all time.

Jesus searched for the miserable, messed-up man. Jesus loved him first and most. That was the teaching point for the first disciples and anyone else following Jesus. There is no one beyond the help and hope of love.

Do you feel as if you are the most messed-up hopeless person on the planet? The Lord knows how to get you rolling again.

Legion is one example of so many hopeless causes transformed by someone’s action to love first and love most. Transformed by love, Legion went home packing the most important thing in life, loving God and loving others.

You can, too.

When the wheels fall off, and they will at some point in life, the internal spiritual condition of your heart will most affect your response. You will either sit on the side of life’s road and quit for a while, or you will cry for help from above.

Legion ran for the cover of deadness and darkness. Chicken Little reacted with the ominous, but mistaken, warning, “The sky is falling.”

Winnie the Pooh’s friend, Eeyore, did not want to get his hopes up, so he would never be let down. Instead, the depressed donkey shut down from anxiety and fell into a pity party.

Perhaps, you have chosen to reside at Eeyore’s Gloomy Place. “Could be worse. Not sure how, but it could be…End of the road. Nothing to do and no hope of things getting better…I will stay here and be miserable.”

Look up! You are not as bad off as Legion, Chicken Little, or Eeyore, Even if you are, Jesus proved there is a happy ending in store for you as well.

Read God’s Word. It introduces you to God and then reminds you of who He is when your wheels of life fall off.

God’s Word leads to faith, the full assurance and strong conviction that God is still in control and God is always good.

Faith in God always leads to Hope—the confident expectation that you will still see all the goodness God has promised…somehow…someway…sometime.

What can you do?

Live in your hopes, not your fears. No one is hopeless. Our failures do not define us. Our problems do not disqualify us. Our drama does not frighten away the restorative love of God.

Faith in God is the spare tire when the wheel falls off. Life’s journey is not over; it is about to get better.                 

WE ARE ALL ROUGH DRAFTS OF THE FINISHED STORY.  

THANKFULLY, GOD ALWAYS WRITES THE LAST CHAPTER. It will always be more glorious and filled with greater goodness than you can even imagine.

Do you live with or around someone who acts and appears to be beyond all hope? Jesus has a word of faith and hope for you and them.

WHEN YOU GIVE LOVE, YOU GIVE HOPE!

Decide to love first and love most. Develop a plan of how that would look in the relationship.  You do not need to take a ten-year or even a ten-week psychological or theological course before you can go home or go to work for the purpose of loving somebody else.

In any circumstance and in any relationship, a definite decision to reset the future purpose is always made from three possible options available:

1. We can give up and quit because things are hard or look hopeless.
2. We can keep things the same and ride out the season of life, just going through the motions while dying on the inside.
3. We can change the relationship for the better.

Give up. Stay the same. Change for the better. What will you do?

Limitless love is always an option on the table when the wheels fall off. You can pause the soap opera. Be a difference maker.

It is time for you to get back in the race.

Faith. Hope. Love. 

God lives inside of you to lead you to other hopeless persons He intends to love first and love most through you.