Responses

"Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different."
 - C.S. Lewis



  Landscape rushes by. How odd is feels to sit in the passenger seat, when every day I get in my car and drive wherever I need to go; driving and doing and checking off lists. When I sit in the passenger seat, there's a freedom to look around, to appreciate the scenery without focusing on driving the vehicle, yet there's also moments of panic, paralyzed with the realization that you aren't the one controlling the brakes or steering the car. Your life in someone else's hands.

My life feels like that right now. I'm sitting in the passenger seat and can have a say in where we go and can even try to grab the steering wheel and change the course, yet in the end it's someone else who is driving and making the decisions and I have to be trusting. I trusted my life to Christ as a little girl. I willingly climbed into the passenger seat and said, "My life is Yours." Honestly though, most of the time I think that I am in fact in the driver seat, making decisions and changing lanes, breathing rushed prayers to avoid wrecks, but driving nonetheless. I know that this is not how it is, but as life rushes by, eyes on the road, it feels like it. Until things happen that remind me clearly that really I only have control over one thing: how I respond.

When something happens, do I pray in faith or frustration? Do I praise or curse? I'm not the driver, as much as I might want to be. If I could map out a plan for my life, goals to check off neatly, I am sure that I would. I try to do that. So it's incredibly annoying and sometimes frightening when things don't happen as I would like or even as I thought that God was planning for them to go.
"I thought this was the plan!!" I can say to God, frustrated at the change and how I don't understand. But oh, I know that's it's better this way. I know that for me to have to trust God, and to easily see just how much I have to trust Him, is such a good thing. So I respond with, "You are faithful. You have a plan for all things. My life is Yours."

I'm learning that trust is a difficult yet beautiful thing. I may have white knuckles from time to time, sitting in the passenger seat and not knowing where this life is going to go, but I trust the driver. I have faith in Him. When He helps me to realize that, it calms my heart and shows me that I am safer than I would ever be if I were the one driving and making the decisions. It shows me that it's okay: through faith and obedience, I can trust and live fully. I can even look around and enjoy the view.