Just Simply Amazing

Hey Everyone! Today is a memorible day for me. I just got through with my first driving lesson! Finally, after six months of complications on getting my permit, I finally got behind the wheel and started going somewhere! (That’s excluding the riding lawnmower and our 4-wheeler). My Dad is my driving instructor and while I was driving he was constantly reminding  me of little things to watch out for and always telling me that it was OK if I wanted to slow down a bit. (Not that I was driving fast or anything, but…) He would also tell me when it was a good time to apply the brakes, the gas, turn on my blinker, always be looking out for things going on behind me, don’t slam or ride on the brakes, and never forget to put on your parking brake when parking.  

I drove around in the residential neighborhood behind our house and was confident in the fact that I knew my instructor wasn’t going to tell me to do something I couldn’t handle on the very first day. After quite a few successful runs around the block Dad had me turn into an empty cul-de-sac. After turning in a little ways and stopping he told me to put the car in reverse and back up. He said all I had to do was do the same thing I had just done to get into the cul-de-sac, except do it backwards. With one hand on the wheel I turned around to get a clear view of the street behind me and noticed that I couldn’t see very much of the road behind me at all. When I told him this he said, “You can do it. Just keeping looking out the back window and using your mirrors, you’ll do fine.” Do fine? Maybe I underestimated my instructor, was he really asking me to back up? Are you kidding! I couldn’t see hardly anything and he said I would do fine? “Go ahead and take it nice and slow.” was all he said after that. I kept telling myself over and over, “Nothing can go too wrong. Besides that’s why they invented brakes, to help stop cars from going the wrong direction to fast.”  As I slowly let off the brake and I maneuvered the car where I wanted it to go, I realized that it wasn’t that hard. I know, I should have trusted dad the whole time, but it’s hard when you have no idea where you’re going or what you’re doing.

When we got back to the house and I ran upstairs to post about this I started thinking about me trusting Dad and found out that there was a spiritual analogy that fit perfectly. Like my instructor, our Heavenly Instructor is also always giving us little reminders on what to watch out for. Instead of, “Brianna, just go the speed limit.” It would be something like, “Brianna, slow down in life and talk to me sometimes.”

Sometimes I find that my Heavenly Instructor will give me a test (like driving in reverse) and I have a hard time trusting in what He’s telling me to do. The hard part is not being able to see where He is telling me to go, but I know that if I just start going in the direction He wants me to go I’ll find that He is with me (in the passenger seat) the whole way. Telling me that I’m going to do ‘fine’ and ‘just take it nice and easy’ and the path will get clearer. And I also know that He will never give me something that is to hard for me to do.

The verse that goes perfectly along with this is Proverbs 3:5-6

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, all He will make your paths straight.” 

To me, this verse means that I need to trust God when He tests me and tells me to do something where I can’t really see the road in front of me. And to ‘lean not on my own understanding’ I need to believe that everything He asks me to do is for a purpose, to help me to grow, and I don’t need to be wondering if I should put on my “brakes” and question whether God is asking me to do something sane or not. In everything I need to realize that He is with me, leading me, guiding me, helping me, instucting me, in everything and I will go forward on a straight path. I may not know why He is asking me to do something right at the time (like backing up), but I can rely on the fact that He is preparing me for somthing greater and that I will take what I learn in the test and use it sometime in the future (I know I will have to back up while driving sometime in my life).

Anyway, that’s what I got out of my first driving lesson and I hope you learned something to.

Walking by faith not by sight,

Brianna 

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Brianna. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.