Stay the Course

“Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee….” -- St. Augustine

One of my favorite scenes in the movie Driving Miss Daisy is the one where Morgan Freeman’s character, Hoke, is driving Miss Daisy (Jessica Tandy) to the Piggly Wiggly grocery store. He turns and she says something like, “You’re doing it wrong.” For he was not going to the store the same way she was used to going. They argued the whole way to the store but in the end they made it.

I had a similar experience with my granddaughter Paige the other day. I picked her up from school and headed to a local restaurant to meet her mother and other grandparents as they and other members of their family gathered after the funeral of Paige’s Uncle Charles. Her mother had given me directions from Paige’s school.

However, I asked Paige if she remembered where this place was and she indeed did. She said, “You go through the park (Chickamauga National Park) and the restaurant in on your right.”

I said, “Well, we are not going through the park. We are coming from the other direction.” But she insisted her way was the only way. I said, “But Paige, that’s the way you do it when you are coming from your Grandma and Papaw’s house. We are coming from your school.”

It still didn’t seem to sink in. She got silent and as I turned left toward the park and the restaurant, Paige said, “Or you could do it this way.” I glanced at her in my rear view mirror and saw the smile on her face and realized we had come to an agreement. After all our goal was the restaurant, not the route we took to get there. And in her mind, it didn’t matter that my way was the wrong way as long as I got her to her mother and family.

I laughed until I cried at the joy of realizing how important it is to the stay the course. All of us make wrong turns; doing or saying something we probably should not have said; having negative thoughts that impair our right thinking. When that happens to me, I remind myself that the path I’m on belongs to God, not me. I am confident in my own destiny because my life is God’s life in me. I am on the right course.

“If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.” – Galatians 5:22

Seeing With Clear Vision – January 30, 2011