Ignoring the warning light

We own a fleet of old cars. Now that we have three and a half college and high school drivers we have four and a half old cars in our driveway. We've always driven geriatric cars, not because we are particularly fond of them, but because we don't like car payments. And maybe also because my husband likes an automotive challenge. Maybe that's the real reason; I'm not sure.

When I first met K he was driving a lime green Chevy Vega. The car was being rapidly eaten away by leprous rust and sometimes lost body parts en route. I remember one weekend when he was traveling home from college along a Midwestern interstate he lost a fender. He carefully stashed it behind some underbrush, noted the mile marker and picked it up on the return trip. It later miraculously reappeared on the car. He was a wonder-worker. Maybe that's the real reason I married him; I'm not sure.

Over the years he has has kept a huge assortment of vehicles running, sometimes in very creative ways. We've had cars we had to drive with the heat on full blast - in summer- when the temperature guage began to rise. We've had cars that had to be started with a screwdriver wedged in a particular spot under the hood; we owned that car when I was eight months pregnant and could barely fit behind the wheel, never mind under the hood. In our first year of marriage when we were living on love instead of money we had a tire that went flat every night and had to be pumped up every morning with a bicycle pump. In recent years we've had numerous cars in which the Check Engine light stayed permanently on - at least until it was time for inspection.

My husband still does most of the fleet maintenance work himself and is a first class diagnostician. Click and Clack have nothing on him, other than their fabulous Boston accents and their incredibly annoying wheezy laughter. I can't begin to count the times I've called my husband, sometimes from the other side of the world, to describe a symptom or a sound and he's told me almost immediately what the problem is and what to do about it. So if he says I can ignore a rattle, a clank or a warning light I do.

For the past few months I've been ignoring the Check Engine or Service Engine light in two of our cars - the van I usually drive and my husband's Saab which I sometimes use on the weekend. K has determined they are both false alarms and should not be taken seriously. It's amazing how little time it took for the once-disturbing light to fade from my conscious notice, and to eventually become nearly invisible to me. It is as much a part of the normal dashboard landscape now as the fuel guage or the odometer. Just a friendly little message glowing quietly amongst the lighted guages.

Yesterday, however, I felt the consequence of ignoring a warning light. The Check Engine light is on the lower right side of my dashboard display, just above the ignition, just below the fuel guage, just to the right of the speedometer. That quadrant is also home to an additional warning light which reads Check Guages. Those two seemingly innocuous words are often the first clue that something is wrong that needs immediate attention. The lettering style, the lighting, the color of the two Check warnings is identical, and they appear right next to each other. I discovered I had become so used to not heeding the one warning, that I didn't even notice the other until I heard that suspicious tapping noise that even I know means the oil level is dangerously low. Not till that moment did I notice the glowing words, Check Guages right next to Check Engine.

How long had the second warning light been on? I really don't know, but I suspect it was probably there when I drove the car earlier in the day, maybe as early as the previous day. I, however, had become so accustomed to ignoring the fatuous Check Engine light that I treated the new warning with the same indifference. I had successfully quieted the alarm I would normally feel when a glowing message appeared on my dash. I had turned down the volume, shut off the smoke alarm, ignored the warning signs - to my own peril.

Thank God I stopped driving in time. Thank God that three quarts of oil delivered by my favorite mechanic solved the problem. Thank God the van purred happily when I next turned the key. But things could have ended disastrously. And yes, there is a lesson. There always is. I remembered a verse from my youth that saved me from moral or financial dangers on more than one occasion, Proverbs 27:12. A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the foolish continue on and are punished for it.

God puts lots of warning lights in our lives. Sometimes they flash glaringly in front of us, but just as often they appear more subtly, in the corner of our minds, at the edge of our vision, part of the display of our busy lives. We can train ourselves to heed each warning and take its caution to heart, or we can ignore the little lights and keep driving. What would the prudent man do?