The Tree

I really don’t understand why I can’t just have a quiet, normal life. I guess, for some reason, God thinks I can handle crazy better than sane. Honestly, at this point, I just try to go with the flow. I admit it, I’m a little weird. I have issues. One of those issues is travelling. I HATE, LOATHE, ABHOR travelling. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I like to BE THERE. I just don’t like what it takes to actually GET THERE. So, I endure. Today, I was driving home from the beach. Just my children and myself. I get 20 minutes from my next turn off and I get stuck. Literally. Up ahead, there’s this horrid wreck that must have just happened only seconds before I entered the highway. Of course, the entire one side of the interstate was shut down. The police came screaming up the side, the fire trucks and ambulances came down the wrong side of the street, and the medical helicopter came from above.

I thought for sure someone had died, but word filtered back that the two gentlemen were still alive, although badly injured. The driver had been going too fast, lost control and slammed into a tree on the side of the road.

God was good, though. He knows my fear of travelling and being stuck in traffic, so if it had to happen, at least I could see what was going on. I know, that’s silly, but it helped. My children were wonderful. We had a working DVD player and my son was engrossed in the movie. My daughter, being the more dramatic one, was really involved in what was going on up ahead. However, as we couldn’t see much, she soon grew bored. Then she got to meet Jesse, the wonder dog. He was in the car diagonal to ours in the other lane. The owner let him out and Jessie started doing tricks. Oh my goodness, my animal lover daughter was in her element. Thank you, God for the little things.

Of course, I was concerned about the men involved in the accident and I did take the time to pray for them. But I couldn’t help thinking that maybe God wanted me to learn something from this.

Sometimes we get going so fast that we don’t pay attention to the things that are passing us by. We speed right on our merry way thinking everything is hunky dory then, “wham”, we hit a tree. And it’s totally unexpected. But why wouldn’t it happen? We don’t stop to ask God directions, we don’t follow his “speed limits”, we think we’re doing just fine on our own and don’t need to listen to authority or obey His law and yet we’re surprised when our world comes to a screeching, crashing halt.

Hm…it made me stop and think. What about you? How fast are you going in life right now?

Personally, I guess I need to slow down and reassess.