Don’t get hit by oncoming traffic
- Kyle Snyder: Live on Purpose
- June 16, 2021
- 1001
“When everything is coming your way, you’re probably in the wrong lane.” —Tom Snyder.
When I started driving, one thing I had to work on was staying in my lane. My dad told me if I kill somebody, I can’t undo it — great advice from my dad. He would often remind me driving is not a right; it’s a privilege. Sometimes I would get in the other lane, and Mom would yell at me to get over. Of course, when a teenager is learning how to drive, sometimes the parents have to yell at the kid to get their immediate attention or something horrible could happen. The goal is not to make the teen afraid, but to make the teen aware of the gravity of the situation.
Driving is a lot like life, but if life was totally the same as driving, there would be a whole lot more head-on collisions. Some people go down the highway of life and realize they are going the wrong way, so without looking at all, they do a U-turn. There is nothing wrong with realizing we are going in the wrong direction, but too often we turn around and just go as fast as we can in the other direction.
I feel like so many of us are going a hundred miles per hour in a school zone. Who cares where we are going, just as long as we get there as fast as we can? I am the kind of person who wants to help wherever I can. I don’t want to say no to anyone. However, I know if I am going to do what God wants me to do, I will have to say no to people from time to time. I struggle with the thought of hurting people’s feelings when I say no to them, but I need to do what God put me on this Earth to do.
We should not do everything just because we can. It’s fine to do things for fun and be helpful to others, but we should never allow it to keep us from doing what we were made to do. Saying no is not a sin. In fact, saying no might be the greatest thing we can do. If we say yes to everything, we will not get much done for God. If we’re not busy, people might think we are lazy. We can’t help what others think of us.
Too many people care more about what others say than what God has to say. I learned I just need to let some people think whatever they want about me. They have no idea what is going on in my life. There are times when I don’t do much because I need to think a lot about my next move, and that takes time. I can’t be pulled in 12 different directions at once. I need to think.
Time to rest is very important to our well-being. No one can just go and go all the time. There will come a day where everything will catch up to us. We must stay focused and do what we need to do, not be taken away by everything that gets our attention.
Many of us know what we need to do; it is just a matter of doing it. Next time I will write about how we discover what we were put here to do, but until then, if we know what to do, let’s get busy doing it.