Identity?

Drugged from surgery

It was a cool October evening.   Anxiety built up inside me between the job that was ahead of me and being home with the wife and kids.  About 2 hours before the job I got a phone call.

“The truck has blown out exhaust elbow pipes.  They have to be replaced tonight.”

My response to the jaw-dropping, baffling comment was:

“Umm… ok. I guess…  I have community group tonight so I suppose I could come tonight and get that job done… unless it can wait until tomorrow morning?”

A quick response followed…

“Well, the truck is running all day tomorrow in eastern Washington and it’s a road violation… So we are going to need to get them replaced.”

OK.”   I replied with the deep irritating feeling that I really didn’t want to leave my house for a 2 to 4 hour job at 9PM. But I’m a Cerveny, loyalty to my boss runs through my veins, and is the only way to “make it” in this world, even if it destroys your family and makes you miserable.  Or so I have been told.

From that moment on, when I pushed END CALL on my phone, I was battling the inner thoughts of:  how am I going to tell my wife that I have to work?  Am I shorting God with community group?  Am I putting work ahead of God? And,  I want to quit my job!  That battle was verses the justification that, well, this is how you make it in this world.  You have to be miserable.

The conversation with the wife went relatively well.  She was disappointed but understood my dilemma and feelings.  I fought being angry for the entire night even while talking about Jesus with the group that gathered at my house.  How hypercritical could one person be.   I’m fighting anger and frustration while talking about how much Jesus loves!!!  This constant battle in my head fleshed its way out in the form of complaining.  So, in my attempt to “be a holy person” and smother my feeling s of a hypocrite, I became a complainer.  I found the group of people at my house leaving sooner than normal.  Their excuse was, “I feel bad for you that you have to work… we are going to leave early so you can get to work to come home sooner.”   HOW MUCH WORSE!  In all my efforts of not being a hypocrite… I became a hypocrite.  I guess it goes to show you that no matter what I do as a person, my sin will win without Jesus.

But that is another topic all together – back to the saga.

On the drive to the sand and gravel pit, my emotions were still on HIGH in my insides, to the point that butterflies were flapping their wings in my stomach.  I swear that some of them made it up my esophagus leaving that awful taste in your mouth.  Almost like I actually ATE a butterfly.   Why did I feel this way?

“ Maybe, it was the fact the Job was something I have never done before; or, the idea that I am not going to be home to put my kids to bed; or, the thought that my wife was going to be without me; or, I’m going to be working under the lights powered by a generator fighting the thought of being eaten by a coyote or even worse… BIGFOOT!”  Because, I don’t know if you are aware of it, but Bigfoot loves sand and gravel pits and really REALLY loves being around noisy generators.  It’s how he keeps his secret.  He finds some pitiful soul working on semi-trucks at a dark pit, walks up to him and says,

“Hey bro.. I’m wicked thirsty! Got any water?” and then proceeds to eat said person.

I’m not sure if that is actually the case.  But at least I was thinking about as I was continuing to make the list bigger and worse with every thought.

At the dark pit,I fired up my only source of civilization: the generator.  I flicked on the lights and assessed the job.  Sure enough, a giant hole in the pipes just below the mufflers.  One on each side.  I thought to myself,

“Oh, I’ll just patch them.  I’ll take this piece of flat steel and shape it into a 6″pipe that makes a 90 degree bend.   -Yeah, good thought Chris!  That is nearly impossible!  And remember, you don’t know how to weld and, you’re a Cerveny.  That isn’t being loyal to the job.  That is cheating anyway.”

So I sucked up my cheap thoughts and started diving into the job.

First, I took the bolts off the bracket mount on top.  Then on the bottom, followed by removing the clamp band that holds the muffler to the pipe and sealing it from exhaust gas leakage.  “WOW,” I thought.  “All these bolts are coming out!! This is going to be easier than I thought.  Maybe there is some redemption for all my frustrations and hypocrisy.”

I grabbed hold of the muffler like a three year old hugging his teddy bear, and gave it a twist, trying to separate the muffler from the pipe.  NOTHING, at first.  Then I got smart and fired up the OxyAcedalyne torch.  Heating up the metal until it was almost pliable did the trick. POP. The muffler came off the pipe.  Now all I needed to do was replace the pipe, re install the muffler, tighten the clamps, and bolt up the mounts.

I was feeling good about this so far.  In my “human nature”  I had forgotten all about the butterflies, what caused them, and Bigfoot.  I said again to myself, “this is awesome, an hour and a half into this and I’m half way done.  I’ll be home around 11 at this rate.”  Then I proceeded to do a touchdown dance and gave myself the best high five any one could give themselves.

After a short celebration, I started tackling the other side.  Performing all the same steps as the last and thinking that it would be identical, I ran into an issue.  Bolts were braking and I had the worst fight with that ridiculous clamp that seals exhaust gas and holds the muffler to the pipe.  I also discovered that my temper was rising as I saw the 11 o’clock hour slip by.

How quick my attitude can change from my circumstances!

I finally got the clamp cut off heated the muffler with the torch and gave it a twist.  NOTHING. Gave it another twist. Nothing.  Used more heat… NOTHING!!  Sprayed oil on the seam… used more heat, NOTHING!!!  Now I was as HOT as the muffler.   I think BIGFOOT would have been scared of me.  I would have eaten him, FOR SURE!!!

I hugged that muffler tighter than I have hugged anything in my life.  Wallowed in anger, that this was taking forever, frustration that- I was being beat by an inanimate object, shame that I was acting this way, and sadness that I wasn’t home with my family, – I twisted that muffler and got about an inch of travel in both directions then… pop, and POP! The muffler spun, my hand slipped off nearly smacking myself in the face, and I went down with an amazing pain in my wrist.

It was one of those pains that you look at knowing that it hurts but you can’t quite feel the full extent of it yet. And then… WOW!! There it was.  The feeling like someone just blew up a grenade in my wrist.  As I paced back and forth staring at my wrist as if I were superman with e-ray vision to determine what exactly I had done, my emotions got the best of me again and any tool within grabbing distance was being thrown out into the dark abyss. Because that what makes pain feel better.  Throwing things.  Or so I have been told.

Now I know I wasn’t getting home anytime soon, and I made the dreaded phone call home.  “Honey” I said. “I hurt myself.  My wrist is swollen and is in wicked amounts of pain, but I can move it.”

Still pacing back and forth we decided that I would be OK.  And besides, I couldn’t leave the truck the way it was.  It was hitting the road in a few hours for now it was a little after midnight.

The cold air was setting in and I finally got the muffler off by breaking the pipe- a procedure that took all of 10 minutes to do and would have saved two hours, all the physical pain, and mostly, the emotional heart ache.  I then replaced the pipe reinstalled the muffler, tightened the clamps, washed up and left the “hole in the ground” around 2AM.  A measly two hours. before the truck was rolling out for the day’s journey.

Two weeks later I finally went to the doctor because I wasn’t getting better.  It turns out that throwing tools doesn’t actually do anything.  The doctor put me in a brace to keep my wrist straight.  Many months later, I had surgery to repair a tendon that I pulled out of place, crushing it, and placing it on top of my ulnar bone.  Turns out I was superman all along and I don’t have to worry about Bigfoot anymore either.

So here I sit, almost a year after my “attitude”.  The wrist is still not healed and I’m still not working.  My “attitude” has affected my wife who is pregnant with our 5th child, refinancing our house at record low interest rates, and an idea of being 32 and not knowing what I want to be when I grow up.

Or was this part of the big plan all along?  That I would be a college student.  The exact opposite of what I was trained to be.  It’s hard to believe most days, but my identity is not found in the work I do, it is in who God has made me to be. – A lover of Jesus, a husband, and a father.  Everything else is… everything else.  My “attitude” didn’t change “who” I am, it changed what I was at that moment.  But that attitude, helped make me who I am today:

-A person struggling with his attitude and struggling with who, God has made me to be.