This Car is My Life
Not long ago, I found myself talking with my students about their dream cars—the kind they imagine driving the moment they get their licenses. Their excitement pulled me back to my own first car: a $700, 1979 Chevy Nova, beige, dented, unreliable. But I had a vision. I was going to restore it, and more than that, I dreamed my dad and I would bond over fixing it together after the loss of my mom.
One evening, full of teenage pride, I told him, “This car is my life.” He looked at me and said something I’ll never forget: “I hope this is not your life.” At the time I didn’t understand. Now I do.
We all have “one thing” we convince ourselves will make our lives whole. It might be a car, a house, a career, or even a relationship. Sometimes it’s our health or our sense of achievement. We tell ourselves that if this one piece fell into place, then everything else would finally make sense. But here’s the problem: when we elevate any good thing into the ultimate thing, it begins to define us. What we thought would set us free can actually enslave us.
That Nova began to consume me. Every dollar I had went into keeping it running. What started as a dream of restoration became a burden. The car no longer belonged to me. I belonged to it.
This is what Jesus warns against when he say, "If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple..." (Luke 14:25-33)
Jesus isn’t asking us to despise the people we love or the things we need. He is asking us to let go of the tendency to make finite things carry infinite weight. When we try to extract ultimate meaning from what can never give it, we become trapped.
The invitation is not to care less about our lives, our relationships, or our work. It’s to love them more freely, without the desperate neediness that turns gifts into burdens. These things aren’t meant to be destinations; they’re starting points. They’re ways God reveals his love to us, not replacements for it.
Letting go doesn’t mean indifference. It means freedom. Freedom to receive what we have as gift, to love without clinging, and to recognize that God’s love is bigger than any “one thing” we try to build our lives around.
In the end, it’s not about having the car. It’s about where the road takes you. For those who travel light, the road always leads to life with God.
Fr. John Gribowich
