Speed Trap

The State of California sent me a letter last week.  I suspected (correctly) it wasn’t a love letter.  I have a whole routine for receiving bad news via the postal service.  Even if it’s delivered to my home, I will not open it there and I never – ever – open bad news mail on Fridays or weekends.  I finally grabbed my less-then-love letter off the microwave on the way to work one morning.  It was a note from the capitol, reminding me that my driving privileges in this illustrious state are under threat.  Well, I knew that already.

Everyone has told me I have one more strike after I received two speeding tickets in the same week when I first moved here.  California appears to believe that if you get three speeding tickets, you do not know how to drive and therefore, deserve to have your license suspended.  I prefer to think if you get speeding tickets (regardless of the number), it’s not because you don't know how to drive, but because your free spirit cannot be limited.  But whatever.

I wasn’t on the highway ten minutes when I came up on a truck – in the slow lane – going really slow.  Yeah, it was ridiculous, he was going like, sixty.  Never so much as lifting my foot from the gas, I pulled into the next lane, passed the truck and then returned to my spot in the law-abiding-citizen-good-grief-this-takes-forever-to-get-to-work lane.

It was a busy day, full of meetings and challenges, needy employees and email plans for weddings and vacations and career choices with friends.  Challenging coworkers, joking with coworkers and short fuse deadlines.  Family needing my attention, appointments to be scheduled and errands to run during lunch.  Eight hours later, it was finally time to go home.  As I was pulling out of the parking lot, I turned the radio off and just listened to the quiet.  “I can hear you now.” I told God, “Let’s just go home, you and me.  No music, no cell phone, no mental lists for tomorrow.  Just you and me.”  All the way home, while I chattered away to God (yeah, out loud, lol ;), I also kept reminding myself to at least stay in the general vicinity of 60 miles per hour.  Or else.

It’s so easy to get going in life and then pretty soon, we don’t even know why we’re going so fast.  There are warning signs – letters from the state, or maybe skipping our daily time in the Word a little too often – but we ignore them.  If we’re not careful, if we ignore those warnings for too long, we’ll be left with larger issues.  If my foot doesn’t hurry up and come off that gas pedal, I’m not going to have a license, or insurance to cover the car I won’t be able to drive anyway.  If we pack our days so full of stuff that we can’t fit in quality time with God, we won’t have the close relationship with Him, that we’re busing fostering with everything else in this world.  Sometimes in our daily lives, we have to remind ourselves to take our foot (foots? ;) off the pedal and just slow down.

Love y'all,
~M~