Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Wait, I know a shortcut.

Don't leave home without it
The best invention in my world has been the GPS.  It is no secret in my family that I am
directionally impaired.  More than one person has said that I couldn't punch my way out of a paper bag.  And one of those people was me.  There was a time when leaving a baseball game, I spent 20 minutes trying to find my way out of the parking lot.  The kids still laugh about that.  (Because there are always witnesses).

One time I was driving to Wichita to meet sister Nori, for a weekend rendezvous.  The "three-hour" drive almost turned into an adventure reminiscent of Gilligan's Island, as we approached the seven hour mark; almost midnight and were still aimlessly driving in the country, now punchy with tired laughter.  Another time, Marissa and I were heading back to Topeka and somehow ended up in I don't even know where.  To soothe our weary selves, we stopped at a bookstore and bought reading material.  I guess that was just in case we never made it home.  Do you see a common theme yet?  I could write a book of stories just like this.

Always driving blind.
Since moving to Austin four years ago, I have managed relatively well.  But that is only because of the GPS capabilities that every phone has these days.  I am not going to lie.  There are times, even now, (latest one last week), that I will find myself in a situation of basically "I have no idea how I got to where I am...I am lost, it is dark,,,I want to go home."

Obviously, I can retrace my steps (or in that particular case...driving missteps) and figure out exactly where the errors were made.  That is the beauty of hindsight.  And hindsight is always 20/20 if a few things come into play.  First, we must be willing to look back and see what we did (right or wrong).   When the younger me made a mistake , I wasn't always interested in looking back, just moving on. That doesn't play well into step two.

We will never be able to learn from a mistake if we haven't claimed it as ours.  OWN IT!  (I may not be talking just about directions now...or at least not only as they apply to physically getting somewhere).  Once we look back and see what we did was wrong and claim it as our own, something wonderful has the possibility of happening.

We step right into opportunity.  Opportunity for change.  Opportunity for forgiveness.  Opportunity to do things differently going forward.  To go a different direction.  So many avenues and directions open up if we can just get to Step 3.

When Madison is playing basketball and running back down the court after the opponent has the ball, I am always yelling, "turn and look, turn and look".  That is what I want to be doing all the time.

Because this is what I know for sure.  I will never get to where I need to go all the time without help.  My internal GPS may fail me.  I want to be able to "turn and look" to see what opportunities are available to me when this happens.  And then I want to be able to move forward.

Until next time.
#turnandlook
#praywithoutceasing

Your pal,

Kari




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