Have you ever seen signs that read something like this:
I have. Every time I do, I chuckle.
Who is DUMB enough to do that? Obviously somebody… enough somebodies that they’ve made signs, anyway. I’ve lived around the same roads all my life (except the three years I spent getting a two-year music degree [don’t judge until you’ve been there. Rough stuff.]) and driving over them is like rereading a favorite poetry passage. It’s nearly effortless.
Yesterday, I drove one of those roads. Presently, it’s in the thick of construction. I’ve driven it before, as I said above. I’ve even driven it when it’s been in the thick of construction; YEA I have driven it many, many times in it’s PRESENT state of construction.
But yesterday.
Was different.
I was in a state of frantic nervousness. I was fairly WROUGHT with AGITATION! And now that I’ve run the risk of sounding like a character from Green Gables, I’ll get straight to the point: I was on my way to ask businesses for donations to Austin’s Auction.
I want to help, you know.
But I want to ask for donations as much as I want to shoot myself in the foot.
Luckily, the night before I’d gotten a phone call from my aunt who told me she had woken up in the middle of the night before and felt impressed to collect donations for the auction. The Lord was on a mission to get donations collected. Alicia, He understood, was not getting it done.
Aunt Trina, He knew, would.
I’m terrible embarrassed about it. More than ANYTHING, I want the Lord to know He can count on me for anything that needs doing. And here I was, driving down the road, fully knowing what I was about to do.
I was about to go into business doors and ask them for a donation.
BUT BEFORE I COULD, I apparently needed to follow a construction tractor down his work path.
The signs? Not so funny anymore. I can almost hear my mother reading the words to me: Now remember, darling… we DON’T follow the big ugly tractors with ADOT men in them. Right? What did we learn today?
But I did it. Did I do it well? Of course not. I bumbled into one restaurant and only had the heart to ask to hang a flyer in the window. By the time I was done, or had done as much as my nerves could stomach (I had my two kiddos with me), I took all three of us to McDonalds. After a short lunch, I drove home and kept TRUE to MY course and not the course of the construction workers.
I stopped to get gas, still rife with agitation.
And a few minutes later, I was walking a small strip of the main road, hunting for my gas cap.
Yes, in my state, I had forgotten to put the gas cap on -something I’m usually extra vigilant about.
Thank goodness for Aunt Trina. Thank goodness for Heavenly Father’s absolute passion for variety. For you and I are not the same.
We’re here to bolster each other… how does the saying go?
Thee lift me, and I’ll lift thee and we’ll all ascend together.
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