As a young boy I grew up hearing stories of my father’s hotrods that he once owned. I’ve always had an infatuation with just about anything motorized. (I still do). One of the cars that my Dad owned, a Chevrolet Chevelle, stuck out in my mind to the point that I built scale models, drew pictures, and dreamt about one day owning my very own.

Fast forward a few decades and that dream became a reality. Through a lot of work, time and money, i finally built MY dream car. During the slow tedious process of restoration, you unveil many problems that you never knew existed. It’s almost as if you take one step forward and two steps back in everything you do! It can be maddening at times.

One of the biggest issues is making sure that you get all of the rust or corrosive material off of the metal before you apply the paint. I quickly learned that although the paint job is what most people notice, what makes it good is all of the hours of work that no-one sees (There is a lesson in that). It is only as good as the prep and the foundation work done before it. And just like so many things in life, if you try and shortcut or cover any problem areas up, it WILL come back to the surface with time. So inevitably, one day I’m walking up to my car and I spot what appears to be a bubble in the paint, another flaw, and another.. you get the point.

I would describe them as 5 footers.. from 5 or more feet away you probably wouldn’t even notice unless you knew what you were looking for. This Seems to be the way a lot of us live our lives. From a distance it looks fine, no flaws, no defects. But if you get closer, you’ll start to notice that theres a chip here, a flaw there, an imperfection over there. Perhaps this is why we don’t like people to get too close sometimes? Rather than take the time to address the issues, we just cover them up.

Recently, I was at a car show by myself just walking around admiring other people’s builds when all of the sudden a truck caught my eye. It was no ordinary truck. The amount of detail in this thing was on another level. I spent no less than 10 minutes walking around it inspecting it from front to back when all of the sudden it hit me what i was actually doing.

I had started by admiring the truck but suddenly realized that i was spending my time LOOKING FOR FLAWS. I Literally said out loud to myself, “What am i doing?”

It is not in my nature to look for the worst in anything. In Fact I’m pretty optimistic about most things in life. It began to raise questions in my mind. Was I looking for flaws in someone else’s work to make me feel better about mine? What Good would it have done me to find a flaw in someones ride? None. The answer is none. It’s the age old saying that “Blowing someone else’s candle out doesn’t make yours any brighter.”

It is amazing how many people are ok with you until you begin to succeed. Or maybe i should put it like this, you began to get yourself squared away and all of the sudden folks you thought were with you began to point out all of your flaws. Suddenly the things once celebrated become the things now attacked. It’s typically nothing to do with your success though, It is usually the inner conflict caused by the lack of theirs. How you celebrate someone else’s success says a ton about you! And if you’re unable to celebrate someone else’s success, then you’ll be unable to withstand your own.

Colossians 3:13 tells us to “Make allowance for each others faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.”

My challenge to Myself and everyone else is this:

Next time that i am tempted to find fault in someone, take inventory of my own. Also to understand that if someone is on another level higher than me, they’ve done something I’ve yet to do. The more time I waste criticizing them, the less time I have to become who God has called me to be. Lets celebrate more, criticize less!!

Hope this Helps Someone!!

God Bless You all.

Daryl Courtney.