Recalculating

I was thinking about Garmin today on the drive home, how I have really come to rely on it. I slide in behind the wheel and although I'm making the physical decisions, pressing down on the accelerator, looking both ways, using my blinkers, Garmin is in charge.

I've struggled with this all of my life, even finding places I've repeatedly visited. I don't know the first thing about using the sun as a directional marker or which freeway goes where. We 'wanderers' keep a deep, dark secret, and that is we don't trust ourselves behind the wheel. We don't have that inner voice, that sense, or inkling, or whatever you want to call it. We know where we are and where we're headed and that's all.

When I lived in Phoenix, my dad recommended that I lay out a city map on the bed and helped me memorize the relationships of streets and landmarks. The strategy worked well, except when the destination is complicated, say across six cities and as many freeways.  Overall, with lost-at-the-corner drivers, there needs to be trust in something more.

And that is how I came to rely so much on a GPS. I love how it adapts.  It talks. It frets. It warns. It lets me detour to the outlets and afterwards recalculates how to get back on the road. If I know a shortcut, it will double check that the route we are on will take us where we want to go.  There's been a couple of wild trips when GPS took me through unfamiliar territory, and as I scurried around the state, I had to learn how to follow. In other words, the tool only works if you trust, listen and act. 
In a spiritual way, you can't build a relationship with God without a willingness to listen to listen. Sometimes the desire to take control and be willful is overpowering when I am lost, and there are too many times that I have. But when I ask for help and delegate all of life's fears to Him, He knows the direction and leads the way.

And so as I reflect on all the detours in life, with all its challenges and lessons, I can see it was ego, or fear, or just plain pig-headedness in the way of understanding this simple truth. All I would have had to do is trust Him to pick the route and then follow it. Recalculating...