At the car wash

So I went to the doctor AGAIN this past week. This time I saw a doctor at Emory that specializes in thyroid cancer. I'll keep it short and simple, he said that everything will be fine, that what I have can be treated, that some of the the things that have been done to me so far may not have been done the best way, and that I will probably have to have surgery again to remove the lymph nodes in my neck. So, with all that being said, I've been in kind of a crappy mood this week. Not that anything has changed or is going wrong, I've just been in a funk. Maybe because work has been busy, maybe because I've been tired and maybe just because. But then along came Sunday. I've really become a fan of Sundays. It's a chance for me to go to church and feel the warmth of God's love and the community of believers that wrap their arms around me to comfort me. I realized today that on the way home that church has become something like a car was to me. Ever since all this stuff, I find myself getting very emotional during worship time and the music in our contemporary service seems to really get to me. But the worst is communion. Each week I find myself praying to God and wiping away tears as the emotion pours out of my soul. And those tears are what washes away all the gunk and grime on my spiritual car. We are like cars. We all need fuel to run each day. We all need a tune up every once in a while. And we all get covered by dirt, dust and pollen. But just because our car is dirty, it still runs pretty much the same. But there's just something about getting your car washed that feels good. Everyone knows that getting it washed does nothing to make the engine run any better. Getting it washed doesn't make the alignment any straighter. Getting it washed doesn't fix that little chip in the windshield from the rock that hit it on the interstate last month. But there is just something about a clean car that seems to just feel good. It makes you happy and at peace with your car. You want to roll the windows down and just cruise around the neighborhood. Church does that for my soul. Church does not perform surgery. Church does not administer radiation treatments. Church does not do ultrasounds or CAT scans. But going to church and letting the tears fall to the floor in front of me while the communion trays are being passed around the pews, washes away the craps that builds up on my spiritual car. And I think we all need a good car wash every once in a while.