Richelle Hofer

When My Identity Got Wrapped Around a Steering Wheel

I never expected a car to unravel me – but that’s exactly what happened.

This weekend, I traded in my GLS – a car I’d owned for 6 years. It was the sensible thing to do. It was getting old and it had 165,000 miles on it. The older a Mercedes gets, the more expensive it is to maintain and boy did I feel that this past year.

I pride myself on making logical decisions. It didn’t make sense to keep it. It was time for it to go. So I traded it in. I signed the papers, handed in my old keys, got in the new car and drove out of the lot.

As we drove away I started crying – and I kept crying. Like literally ALL day.

I am logical. THIS? This perpetual crying? About a CAR? Totally NOT logical.

I kept saying to myself “What the heck is wrong with me? It was a CAR! A worn out car! It wasn’t my best friend for heavens sake!”

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized, it wasn’t really about the car.

The Accidental Anchoring

I bought the GLS at what seemed like the “peak” of my life. To that point I’d never bought a car just because I loved it. When I bought it, I saw it and I said “That one! I love it!” and I bought it.

It was big and it was so beautiful. It was the kind of car that makes you feel a little powerful when you drive it.

But about two years after I brought it home, my whole world fell apart. What followed was three of the hardest years of my life. I felt completely beat down, exhausted. I felt weak and powerless in ways I’d never felt before.

I would force myself to get out of bed. Force myself to get ready in the morning. And then I’d walk out into my garage and get into this beautiful, and confident car. It looked “put together” in a way that you’d never know the driver was falling apart. It was a reminder of who I used to be at a time when I barely recognized myself. It became like a weird piece of emotional armor for me.

I didn’t do it consciously.
I didn’t even realize I was doing it.
But I wrapped a piece of my identity around that car.

The Quick Fix vs The True Source

When you’re walking through fire, it’s easy to reach for the quick fix — the thing that makes you feel powerful for a moment. The thing that reflects back an image of strength when you feel anything but.

The kind of “power” we feel when we do this is fake… and it’s dangerous.

As a Christian, I believe that my identity is in Christ. The hard part is, when I reach out to Christ when my world is shaking, it pretty much never feels like He helps much in the moment. I have an entire journal full of prayers to God begging for help during that 3 year period.

But God isn’t big on “quick fixes”. He wants to build foundations. And foundations take time. And time requires faith.

UGH! Faith is hard. It’s so much easier to reach for something tangible.

And we all do this, don’t we?
We anchor ourselves to things that are fallible:

• A job title
• A relationship
• A number in a bank account
• A sense of control
• A successful moment
• A home
• A car

But He is the only One who never:

• breaks
• depreciates
• malfunctions
• requires trade-ins
• ages out
• loses value
• becomes obsolete
• gets too many miles

He is unfailing.
He is omniscient.
He is omnipotent.
He is constant.

This whole experience has made me reflect on how quickly we attach ourselves to things that were never meant to define us. How easily we ask temporary things to do eternal jobs. How often we reach for something visible when the invisible (God) feels too slow.

So, yes, I cried over a car. But what I was really crying about was how I wrapped my identity around its steering wheel. How I accidentally relied on a hunk of metal and leather to keep me propped up instead of fully relying on God.

These lessons are painful, but I’m so grateful that God shows them to us. I’ll probably never do it perfectly, but I’m so grateful that God extends endless grace to us while we try to figure it all out.

Psalm 20:7 says “Some trust in chariots and some in horses” (or GLS’s) “but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”