As Christians, we are never on a more troubled path than when we are following our own lead.~ Pastor Bill
When I was a younger woman, okay, much younger
woman, I liked nothing better than to take a drive (usually with my sister)
turning down a road that we had never traveled before just to see where it took
us. It was an adventure. Fun. Exciting. And long before the days of GPS and gas prices over $2 a gallon.
Last week, I had the joy of meeting with Pastor Bill and his darling wife Abby. That I would have to take an hour's journey on
my own was going to be just the adventure I could handle. I don't go far these
days. I have, over time, become a Nervous Nellie among other constraints of
mind and body.
Before I had been on the road half an hour, I had
two disasters adventures. One was an open driver's side door whilst going
through the car wash and the second was a flat tire that needed replacing. Oh
joy unspeakable! *I would later be very grateful for that flat tire as you
will see.
~new tire time~
We all arrived at our destination on schedule and had
lunch and fellowship together. I received some much-needed, wise counsel. We ended our
time together with prayer in the parking lot and then we parted ways. Bill and
Abby would be traveling southeast and I would be should have been traveling
southwest.
And that's where my adventure really began for, in
an effort to avoid traveling on I-95 for just a few miles, I struck off not
knowing where I was going believing that I could take a turn at any point in
time and find my way to the correct highway.
The short story is that I wound up arriving home
well over three hours later when I should have been there within an hour. I was
lost in middle Maine. Instead of going southwest, I was going northwest and
actually went much farther from home than I had been at our meeting place.
~Vienna, Maine? Where is that?! (GPS thinks Vienna, Austria)~
There was anxiety, there was fear, there were
tears, frustration, and even panic. I remember pulling over to the side of the
road and screaming where am I? I didn't trust the GPS because I was laboring
under my own wrong ideas of where I was when I had not one clue. Talk about
Stupid. Okay, if you don't mind, let's not.
~where am I?!~
The point of this little story is to say that one
never really knows where he/she is on this journey called Life. We get lost,
take a wrong road, think we know best, and on and on.
