Shortly after my fifteenth birthday, my dad told me that after the first snow, he would teach me how to drive. I thought this was an odd time to learn to drive, but I could not wait for the opportunity to learn.
A few months later the first dusting of snow came. My dad handed me the keys to an old jeep that was help together with bailing twine and wire. As we walked out of the house, my dad grabbed two pillows. At first I thought he was bringing his own ‘airbags’ and anticipated a crash. To my surprise, the pillows were for me. He was not preparing for a ‘crash’, he knew that the driver’s seat in the jeep was not adjustable, and I would not only need a pillow behind my back, but I would need to sit on a pillow in order to reach the peddles. I climbed in behind the steering wheel, fluffed my pillows, and went to start the jeep. I didn’t realize that not only was my dad teaching me how to drive, but teaching me to drive a stick shift. As I pushed the clutch down to the floor, I had to slide down to the very edge of the seat, where I could no longer see out of the windshield. I started the Jeep, put it in first gear, and started to release the clutch. As we jumped forward, my dad helped me steer to the Jeep over to the pasture as I put the jeep into second gear. Once into the pasture, he instructed me to drive in a big circle. After the circle was complete, he told me I needed to follow the tracks I had just made in the snow. It was not as easy as I thought. Not only did I have to figure out exactly where my wheels were, but I had to look ahead and think about where I was going, and keep my wheels in the tracks while I shifted up as I went faster and shifted down as I slowed down or stopped.
That day I learned several things. I learned to drive under challenging circumstances, I learned a new way to trust my dad, I learned how important it is to look ahead and make sure that I stayed on track as I slipped above and below the dashboard as I was shifting, and that even where you are going in circles, you can be going ‘somewhere’.
“But I trust in you, Lord, I say, “You are God.”” Psalms 31:14
