01 Nov I Failed God Today

If you decide to share what you’ve learned about strengthening your relationship with God, realize you will probably be tested in that very belief. I’m writing about trusting Him, yet I listened when the evil one taunted me with negative thoughts and fears. I realized I had forgotten to take my cell phone with me as I was driving to church on Sunday morning. It’s about a half-hour drive from where I’m staying, and half that drive is on a turnpike. I’m visiting my sister in a different state, so I’m unfamiliar with the whereabouts of any auto mechanics or garages. I had my GPS to guide me to the address, but no phone to call for roadside assistance in case of mechanical failure or tire blow out. I’ve had my share of car problems while driving on highways and this car is twelve years old with five-year-old tires. What if I had car trouble on the highway? I couldn’t call roadside assistance. I couldn’t call my sister or nephew to ask them to call for help. I tried to talk myself out of it, telling God I trusted Him to get me there and back. But when I approached the turn off onto the ramp for the highway, I panicked and pull into a parking lot. I sat there arguing with myself. God was waiting for me to worship Him with the congregation. I tell Him I trust Him, yet there I was, my heart beating wildly in fear. I was putting my trust in my cell phone to rescue me from an imagined mechanical malfunction. I envisioned myself stuck in the heat on the side of a highway with cars zooming by at 60MPH. I seemed to experience a sort of mini-panic attack.

I failed to remind myself of all the years I drove all over South Florida without a GPS or a Cell phone. Once, I had to pull over on the side of a highway and change my tire. I had watched others do the same, so was able to do it alone.  I also forgot about the times I did have road trouble and it was resolved fairly easily with the help of others who stopped to help. One couple stopped and let me use their cell, then my son who happened to be going down the same street drove me home. Another time, four guys stopped and helped me start my manual shift car in the middle of traffic by pushing it and telling me to pop the clutch. It worked. I told them they were angels. Another time, I was close to my exit when something broke, and I could only turn my car left. A student had told me a joke a few days before: “Two wrongs don’t make a right, but three rights make a left.” Using that info, I was able to get to the school I was teaching at by turning left a lot of times. I called a mechanic who towed the car to his shop while I taught.

My most obvious sign of Divine Intervention on a highway was when my husband and I were vacationing by driving in our compact car from Miami, Florida to the Kentucky Derby and visiting sights along the way. We decided to go back home by way of Graceland. After visiting the Elvis homestead and buying a few of his CD’s, my husband planned on driving all the way back home. We were listening to CD’s because as we drove on the mountainous highways, the radio would go in and out and have to be adjusted. Thus, we heard no news. It did seem that the sky was darker than usual in mid-afternoon, but it was raining hard and the road wound in and out of tall trees. As we approached the top of a high hill, all the lights in the car shut off and the engine failed. We hadn’t seen any exits for quite a while and no cars. I was a member of a Charismatic prayer group at that time and had learned from them to praise God in all things, but especially in times of struggle. I began to thank and praise God and tell Him I trusted Him in this situation and was ready to accept whatever He intended for me. Somehow the car had enough momentum to continue forward and reach the top of the rise, then it just continued downhill on its own. As we neared the bottom of the hill, we saw an exit. Ken turned toward the exit and the car continued coasting. At the end of the turnoff was a gas station with a garage. We turned in there. The car finally came to a stop. Ken went in and arranged with a mechanic to take care of the car. He then asked if there was a hotel nearby and the mechanic pointed behind his shop. It was just footsteps away. We got a room and free muffins and coffee to warm up. When we turned on the TV, we found that the Highway we were on was in the path of a tornado. The next morning, we flipped the TV on and saw the destruction the tornado had caused. Surely our tiny car would have taken flight if we had driven much further. On a down note, the mechanic’s bill was $800. It was worth it.

I’d like to be able to say I calmed myself down, trusted in God’s Providence and went on to church. But, I failed the test that day. I made excuses and drove home. I disappointed myself and felt I had disappointed God.

Each day we wake, whether we realize it or not, we’re depending on God to sustain us: to keep us breathing, our hearts beating, our limbs moving, our minds thinking: making a thousand decisions until it’s time to go to sleep again. Then we can only shut our eyes and drift off if we take it for granted He’ll sustain us as we sleep.

As a child, I used to say this prayer at night, though I don’t know if a parent taught it to me. It used to keep me wide awake. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. If I should live for other days, I pray the Lord to guide my ways.” I just thought of it while writing this. As a child, the prayer frightened me because my ideas of an omnipotent God who could take you as you slept did not encourage me to trust Him nor to want to go to sleep. Now it’s consoling somehow. I may have failed my test, but God always knew I would. He’s omniscient and omnipresent, so he knew. He also knew I would learn humility from the failure, and that I would strive even harder to understand that I can trust Him unreservedly to do what is best for my soul. “I pray the Lord to guide my ways.”