Life Lessons

As I got in my car today and drove up to the street, the ride felt unusually bumpy. Puzzled, I stopped at the driveway, got out of my car to take a look, and lo and behold, my front right tire is completely flat.

Now understand that for the past few months, my front right tire had been a little flatter than the other 3, and so I'd periodically just re-inflate it at a gas station. In retrospect, it seems painfully obvious that if a tire is consistently flatter than the others despite repeated inflations, there has to be a leak. And if there's a leak, inevitably it's going to give out. Instead of waiting for a crisis to force me into action, I should have taken my cue and replaced all of my worn tires months ago. The warning signs were there; I just chose to ignore them.

So as I struggled to replace my flat tire with the spare for the first time in my life, I was reminded of a patient I once saw. She was a young, slight, Asian mom of 2, perhaps in her late 20's. It began months before when she decided she wanted to lose weight so she could wear a bikini during the summer. She started dieting, and successfully shed some lbs. So she stopped her diet, but for some reason, she continued to get thinner and thinner [Warning sign #1]. Hmm, that's kind of odd. Well, that's what you think she'd say. But no, actually, she thought, This is fantastic! Now I'm losing weight without having to do any work!

By summertime, she achieved her "bikini weight" (and then some), and it was then that she started feeling a hard lump in her abdomen [Warning sign #2]. She ignored it though because she was liking the results and didn't want to mess up the "good fortune" she was experiencing. The lump steadily grew [Warning sign #3], but it wasn't until it had grown so large that it began to visibly push outward on her stomach, (preventing her from looking good in a bikini), that she finally decided it was time to see a doctor.

As you may have guessed, the lump turned out to be cancer, specifically ovarian cancer. When a person is first able to feel the lump of ovarian cancer, that means it's already really big (a normal ovary is about the size of a walnut); it's probably spread, and the chances of survival are already slim. Unfortunately for her, she'd waited months after she even first noticed it, and by then the cancer had spread all over her body.

As I finished tightening up the bolts on the spare tire, I was then reminded of a sermon I'd once heard: We ignore warning signs at our own peril. When our priorities aren't in the right order, they let you know. And if you don't listen, they have a way of making you listen, often at the worst possible times and in the worst possible way. For example, when you put work ahead of health, your body will let you know your priorities are wrong. You'll be tired all the time, you become short-tempered, you get sick a lot. Eventually, if you keep ignoring the warning signs, your body is just going to shut down, and you'll be forced to put health ahead of work (where it belongs) and do nothing but stay at home (or the hospital) and rest.

As I lowered my car back to the ground (you know, changing a tire isn't as bad as I thought it'd be), I wondered if there were any other warning signs going off in my life, spiritually or relationally. I don't want to wait for a crisis to occur in those areas to realize that something's not going well. But I did realize something. Praise God for warning signs. He gives them to us out of complete love. Without them, you'd never know anything was wrong until it was too late.