Life is a Highway

A man driving in front of me slowly makes a right turn.  As I turn behind him, my crazy self takes over with pure frustration.  This man makes his right turn SLOWLY and then proceeds to scan the road ahead while barely moving an inch at a time.  I literally could see the man moving his head to the left, to the right and then back to center as I yell in my car, "What on God's green Earth are you doing?!?!" and "MOOOOOOVE!!!!" in typical Erika fashion.  I have little patience for slow driving.  I am sure he was checking the road ahead for any hazards, construction, obstacles or pedestrians.  I wonder if he did happen to see something ahead, would he make an immediate u-turn to avoid it?

I am willing to bet that the man in front of me evaluates every life turn just like his street turns.  You see, when I make the decision to make a turn on the streets of life, I make that turn without abandon.  I do not scan the road ahead for obstacles or road closures, but instead face those challenges as they come.  I have never been much of a planner.  Some people follow a very specific life plan with clear goals to reach and a clear path to successfully reach them.  For some it is a career path, for some it is a family path and for some it is both.

So where the heck is my life path??  Why am I constantly making right turns, left turns, u-turns?  Don't get me wrong, I am not just driving through life with no road map at all.  I own a Thomas Guide. (Remember how essential those were before smart phones with Google maps?)  I just have a tendency to throw the Thomas Guide into the trunk where I can't reach it while driving through life. 

I am lucky that this lack of planning ahead has led me to a wonderful life.  If you go through life making right turns like me without looking at the road ahead, it helps to have a good co-pilot.  My hubby is a wonderful co-pilot, always keeping an eye on the road ahead for me and supporting my decision to make a quick and unplanned right turn or even u-turn.  He even loves me despite my erratic turns.

I am also truly blessed to be driving through life with a carseat in the back seat.  It's another turn I took with my co-pilot without over-analyzing the road ahead.  We knew we wanted to have a child, so we grabbed each other's hand and made the turn without looking back.  Best right turn ever.

Two most important right turns I made created my family and I am blessed for it.

But family aside, my life turns have been amazingly abundant with amazingly slow results.  I waste a lot of gas and "wear and tear" on my life car essentially driving in circles.  I have known since I was a small child that I wanted and needed to be a teacher.  And yet I have spent the last seventeen years making all the wrong turns, stalling several times.  I have a good career, a nice paycheck and a solid resume.  But nowhere on that road map does it show that I actually made it to the destination intended.

Maybe it is time to take a lesson from the driver in front of me.  Maybe it is time to check if the road is safe before making the decision to turn.  Or maybe not.  Maybe my erratic life turns on average have been perfect and it might be time to just pull out an old road map, re-route down a side street and steer full force toward the original destination.  I have a full tank of gas and a car full of wonderful family and friends to push my car if it stalls again.

I'm ready.  My right turn signal is blinking.

Comments