I drive 25 minutes to work every day. My previous commute was a seven-minute walk, which was lovely. Having done this drive now for almost two years, I’m coming to appreciate the time in my car.
I utilize these daily 50 minutes in various ways. I listen to podcasts. I talk with my mom. I talk with siblings and friends. I listen to worship music. Sometimes I even drive in silence. In these moments of silence, I’m learning to listen for the Lord.
I’m not a gardener, but in the past the Lord has talked to me in gardening terms. Now that I work in the transportation engineering field, He seems to be talking to me in road terminology as is evident by my last blog post and this blog.
Honestly, before working in transportation I didn’t pay much attention to roads or the designthat had to go into them. Acceleration lanes, specifically, were not on my radar until last week. What exactly is an acceleration lane?
A speed change area or lane consisting of added pavement at the edge of through traffic lanes to permit vehicles to accelerate before merging with the through-traffic flow.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
If you drive on the interstate at all, you have driven on one of these and know them as entrance ramps. Below is a figure from FHWA’s Manual of Uniform Traffic Control devices, and shows two examples of acceleration lanes, just in case you are visual like me. 🙂
I noticed one morning during my commute that drivers will often slow down at the beginning of the acceleration ramp to try and merge sooner onto the interstate. I’m guilty of this myself as the stress of merging causes me to focus only on merging. What I didn’t realize is that I was slowing down all the drivers behind me as I was blocking them from getting to the part of the lane that allows them to merge. I also discovered that by stopping short in this lane I wasn’t using the ramp the way it was created to be used and was hindering my ability to merge well.
This got me thinking about my relationship with the Lord and the life He has called me to. How often do I stop short in life? How often do I not “merge” well in areas of my life because I’m only focused on the detail in front of me? How often does my stopping short cause difficulty for others? As I ponder my own places of stopping short, I’m reminded that life with the Lord is an on-going journey of learning and growing.
Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance.
Proverbs 1:5
Adventures of a Single Pretzel 