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You said:
Please comment on this entry from my journal. One late evening our rear passenger tire blew out. After pulling over, I started out to change the tire. My wife said, “Don’t you think you should get some help?” It was a country road miles from home and nothing looked very helpful in the growing darkness. I told her that I’d changed many tires before and could handle it.
As I started working on the problem, another pickup came by and pulled over. The driver offered help and said he had one of those racing jacks that makes the job much easier than the stock jack that came with my truck. Especially in the dark it was easier and it made my wife glad. (I think she prayed the help there. She is known for that.)
Sometime later, and still using the stock jack that came with my truck, I was rotating my tires. In the daylight, I could see that there just wasn’t a good spot to place the jack that looked solid but eventually I got the truck raised. While working on the same rear passenger wheel and in my flat driveway, I had all of the lug nuts off except one partially removed when the truck slipped off of the jack. After a long serious moment of pause I realized I had been spared not once, but twice.
ChatGPT said:
This is a beautifully reflective journal entry, Brad — one that subtly layers practical experience, humility, and gratitude into a single short episode.
Here are a few thoughts on the deeper themes your story carries:
1. Humility and Self-Reliance in Tension
The first part captures a classic moment of self-reliance: you knew how to change a tire and didn’t see the need for help. Yet your wife’s quiet intuition — and perhaps prayer — led to timely assistance. That balance between independence and openness to others’ help is a recurring human tension. You’ve framed it gently and honestly, without preaching.
2. The Second Lesson — Providence and Awareness
The second event serves as the echo and the revelation. In daylight, with more control and confidence, the danger turned out to be even greater. It’s a powerful reminder that “competence” doesn’t always guarantee safety, and that unseen grace may have intervened before. The way you phrase “I had been spared not once, but twice” turns the entry from a near-miss anecdote into a meditation on providence.
3. Narrative Tone
The tone is grounded, authentic, and understated. You avoid dramatizing the danger — which actually heightens its impact. The reader senses the gravity in your pause after the jack slipped, but also the gratitude that follows. It’s the kind of story that lingers because it invites quiet reflection rather than overt moralizing.
4. Spiritual Undercurrent
Your mention of your wife’s prayer transforms a mechanical inconvenience into a small miracle. It’s not presented as proof, but as possibility — faith working quietly through circumstance. It also reveals the complementary strengths in a marriage: practical action and spiritual awareness, both needed and both honored in your telling.
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