The Road Ahead Looks Great

6/11/19

Fall 1994/Spring 1995

With the brother in a better health situation, my mind could focus on the task at hand. The college life kept moving ahead with day after day of classes and book work. I was able to secure a fantastic job as a private tutor at a tutoring service in a nearby city. It was a fulfilling job because I was a teacher at heart and hoping to get my degree in that field. The hours were perfect; leave school at 2:15pm to start teaching at 3:00pm and clock out at 8pm for the drive home. It was a solid 30 minute drive on the streets of the suburbs of east LA. Most drives were uneventful, and it was basically a straight shot down Arrow Highway.

On occasion the drive was abnormal. A couple of us from school worked at the tutoring service, so we would carpool. One trip, my friend and I were talking and having a good ole’ time, and a guy started yelling at us with his window down, pointing at the ground. We were a tad nervous, because, well this is LA. I soon realized I was driving on a flat tire, pulled over, and we took a look. Since we were not in the tire changing business, looking for the items to change the tire was an ordeal, and the lug nut turning never happened. We were weaklings to say the least. My friend was a blond beauty so many a honk came our way, and one guy stopped in front of us and turned around with a car phone. We waved him on, very nervous; again this is LA. She ran across the street to a pay phone and paged a friend, who showed up and changed the tire. We got back in the car, and it would not start! Our friend was able to help get it going, and we headed to work, late for our first appointments.

When we were stopped at the side of that road with a flat tire, we soon noticed we were on a long stretch of highway that did not have a gas station. Well, before that fateful day, this particular stretch of highway was the best time to get up speed and catch up on time if we were running behind. It had, in the past, been our saving grace when we needed help to get where we needed to go on time. That road was not looking so great those few moments. Our perspective changed in an instance, and we never did look at it the same again. We chuckled about what happened there when we would pass by, and I can go to that spot today and point it out.

Stories of road mishaps can be told by all, but it is amazing that there are not more of them, when we travel well worn paths in the concrete on a daily basis. Many times we take for granted that road, the familiar stop sign or stop light, the same neighborhoods and businesses… Our surroundings do not change but unless our circumstances do, we typically do not notice or we pay little attention to them. When the circumstances change, we then notice. Same with our lives, right? Day by day, we try to live a life that has meaning and fulfillment; focusing on our families, focusing on our relationship with God, focusing on our church family, focusing on… We can fill in the blank with whatever we narrow down our focal points. It is what we are supposed to do, but then the flat tire comes along and what happens?

First off, our physical reactions to the flat tire are super important to discuss. This subject hits close to home, because in the last few years, I have been confronted by the way I react. I truly and purposefully try to be better, not always successful but am grateful for those around me that confront me and give me grace. It is incredibly important to keep my relationship with God strong, which keeps my focus on Him strong when the flat tires come along. I try to remind myself of the following illustration all the time: people are like tea bags; when things around them get hot and boiling, what is on the inside comes out. If we have that relationship with God, and we do not like what we see when it is hot and boiling, there should be a time of reflection on what changes could be made.

Second off, the flat tire changes our perspective; it becomes a reminder. It becomes a place when time, people, places changed, and we have a different perspective. There are many new perspectives that have come along in my life, but cancer was a big one for me. I saw myself as a teenager with a whole life in front of her, and in one week the flat tire changed my perspective to, “Wait a minute, what life?” There is not much life to be had when you wake up from surgery screaming in agony, not having a clue what is happening. When you hear your mom say to someone, “How am I supposed to tell her she has cancer?” When you realize you have an eighteen inch long incision on your stomach and an IV hanging out of your chest. When you see yellow and red liquid going into your body that the doctors say are supposed to get you back to being a teenager.

New perspective? You betcha. I may have not realized it for years to come, but that flat tire gave me a new look at a road I had been traveling on. I eventually became grateful for it, and the road ahead looked great. Jeremiah 29:13 says just that, “For I know the thoughts I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” Psalm 119:105, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” So grateful for God’s road I am on!