How a dead battery interrupted our day

How long have you owned your car? And how many times during that time have you charged your battery? How many times did it die a death that no amount of shocking would revive? We've had our Hyundai Matrix for 4 years, and during that time we have only had the battery charged once. We've had the actual battery changed four times. We found out after the first and only charging that the batteries here are weak. Seriously weak. Like "Charging is useless. Expect to change it once a year" weak. And so we have.

It used to be that our battery would warn us that it was dying in a round about way by freaking out the key faab. Over time, it would become less and less effective at locking and unlocking the doors, until I had to resort to using the actual key. The car would interpret this as an intruder, and since the key faab was broken, I couldn't stop the alarm. I just had to sit there sighing, "I'm not stealing you, you idiot. I OWN YOU!"

Well, this time I had no such warning. True, in recent days it hesitated to start immediately, and I was having to point the key directly at the car for it to respond. But nothing prepared me for going out to the carpark at the office today and having it be completely unresponsive.

It's hard to express the level of my frustration. I had just been dropping off some documents on my way to take the kids to a friend's house. I was going to go home and work on a writing project that I rarely have time to work on. My heart response was, "Seriously God? Today?" I muttered, "What am I going to do?"
And a little voice from the back of the car said, "Pray?"

Uh, yeah. We should . . . pray. Wow - I have to admit that though it had crossed my mind to pray, I wasn't too happy with the Almighty at that moment and I was tempted to keep wallowing. But what do you say to your son who suggests you pray? "NO, I don't want to!" is maybe not the best example. So I prayed.

An hour and a half later, after making a 3 a.m. wake up call to my husband for the car repairman's number (sorry sweetie!), the battery was switched out and our car was alive once again. The blessing of this time was that my allergies had been terrible in the morning, but the hour in the office cleared them up!

What's the moral of this story? I'm not sure. Maybe it's "pray." Maybe it's "don't buy cars in Singapore." You decide.