Comfortable

I'm in school. Being as that is the case and seeing my last post was some time ago, I'm putting 2 and 2 together and it's not looking very good. Well at least for this blog. So I wanted to write something not as a 'goodbye' but more as a 'see you soon'. Something that we can chew on, for a little bit at least.

Ok, so if you ask any of my friends or family about my driving habits they will quickly tell you that I'm an aggressive driver. It's true I'm not gonna deny it. I've lived in a small radius of 100ish miles for all of my life and have studied and learned the quickest ways to get to different places. I'm comfortable with my landmarks and can manipulate my driving even more. In the same sense my Christian walk can become 'known' so I take 'shortcuts'. My dependence on following the yellow-brick-road so to speak becomes less as I take matters into my own hands. It is easy for my to start relying on myself for everything instead of looking to God as my supplier.

Now take my first week of school. I'm going to a new school, living in a different city, sleeping in a different house, breaking in new shoes.....the list goes on. So now I'm an attentive driver, I have a map in my car [yes, don't laugh I'm just enough familiar with Hilo to get lost for a bit]. My spiritual life has had an awakening....I need you God! All of a sudden I feel my comfortable little world crashing down which has a cause and effect play on my reliance of God. All is well, I've become a more careful driver and God is the center of my life.

Well, not really, as we all know habits are hard to break and bad habits are even harder. So I'm driving down the main street looking for a bank that I just passed. I'm so concentrated on looking to my right that I failed to see that the intersection had a red light! I'm skating on thin ice and about to get the bad driver award. As I'm clipping along at a good pace I realize way to late that I'm running a red light. I do the typical slamming on the brakes just to see a truck making the turn in front of me. My anti-lock brakes are trying to stop momentum as I'm seconds away from broad side the back of this large white pickup. In the blur I didn't feel anything hit but automatically followed the truck thru the intersection to confirm all was ok. Out from the drivers side came this huge local guy. I couldn't tell if he was angry at me as I ran over. My heart was racing as I said "I'm so sorry! Are you ok!" He turned out to be very friendly and no damage was done. I felt my sunglasses fog up as my adrenaline was kicking in. I could tell that he was concerned that I was ok and before we parted he gave me a hug.

Two lessons were learned from this.
1) If your gonna drive crazy and almost cause a wreck, find a nice Samoan father driving a white truck to do it to.
2)  If I don't give God complete control of my life, I'm going to cause wrecks in my life as well as others.

I've shared this awful story, not so that you climb a tree when you see me on the road, but so that we can all ponder the amount of control that we give our heavenly Father. 10%, 50% or 100%?  What is our level of trust in Him.

If you're a regular reader you might be noticing a trend of posts that deal in some way about me and driving. If not check out these other posts from my blog.

Mission Accomplished?          Orange Thoughts

 

So until next time, readers...drive safe!