The Alignment

     My husband, Mark, and I had to get our van fixed, and God used that to teach us a lesson.  The lesson was; don't judge until you know for sure, and even if you think you know for sure, don't judge.
     We needed new tires on our van.  The tires that were on the van weren't very old, but they were bad.  They were wearing on the sides.  We took the van into tire store A.  We had planned on getting new tires and an alignment.  We told the machanic what we wanted done, and we left the van to be worked on.  We went across the street to get some lunch.  We got back about two hours later.  When we got back there, the mechanic told us that he didn't do the work, because he noticed that the tie rods were bad.  We only had enough money for the other work, there was no way we could pay for the tie rods too.  The mechanic also told us that if we just got the tires and the alignment, the tires would wear out quickly. 
     We purchased short term insurance when we bought the van.  We checked the paperwork when we got home, and found that the tie rods would be covered.  We took the van to the dealer the next morning and left it there all day.  We went to pick it up in the evening.  The mechanic at the dealership said that the tie rods were fine.  New tires and an alignment would cost more there, so we decided to get it done somewhere else.
     The first thought that came to our minds was tire store A tried to cheat us.  We had just seen a story about mechanics cheating people, on the news, so we knew, that was happening to us.
     On day three, we called around to find the best price.  We took the van to store B.  This time we stuck around to watch.  Store B said that we need new tie rods!  They even took the time to show us.  We couldn't believe this, now we really knew who was trying to cheat us, it wasn't store A, it was the dealer.  We went ahead and got the tires at store B.  We were determined to go back to the dealer and have them fix the tie rods.  We both felt awful about the terrible thoughts we had about store A.
     It is now day four.  We take the van back to the dealer, and leave it for the whole day.  This time Mark called the dealer before we went to pick the van up.  And again the dealers mechanic said that we didn't need new tie rods!  So our thought was, store A and store B tried to cheat us.  We talked about it for a while, we were both tired of the whole thing.  We decided to let the dealer to give the van an alignment.  Then Mark asked, "If the tires go bad right away, like they did before, will you replace them?"  There was a long silence, and then, "Yeah, okay."
     When we got to the dealership to pick up the van, the mechanic came out to talk to us.  He told us that he went ahead and replaced the tie rods.  He assured us that they weren't bad, but he said that they might go bad soon.
     Four days, a lot of stress and jumping to conclusions, but we finally had our van fixed, and our lesson learned.  The lesson; even when you are positive that you know something, you could be wrong.  I guess it wasn't just the van that needed an alignment.  I needed an attitude alignment.  I try to remind myself of these four days every time I start to jump to a conclusion, or make a judgement.