Arguing with the GPS

She’s really getting under my skin.

I’m ready to call it quits, to turn my back and just quit on our relationship.

It’s that GPS-lady — the one who sounds like she’s from Suffolk Massachusetts, or is it Suffolk England.

She nags. She recalculates. She thinks she’s right all the time.

Sometimes it’s because I actually know the better route. While she depends on a satellite 20 miles above the earth to make calculated guesses.  I’ve driven it a 100 hundred times and now she thinks that by taking Road 85 is better. But there’s always traffic on that road and the potholes are horrendous. I refuse to go that way. Once she realizes I’m not going to change my mind, she gives up on the U-turns. She simply recalculates and moves on with the my route.

I can be a little stubborn.

And sometimes I want to go the long way, because the scenery is better, or the I’ve never driven on the other side of the field, or I’m just looking for something new.

I’ve ignored voices my whole life, arguing with those who knew better through wisdom or experience. Sometimes it’s working out. Sometimes, that ignoring has been to my detriment. My mother wanted me to be a medical missionary. But I couldn’t stand blood — still can’t. She she pushed me to her second choice — an electrical engineer. Alas, I’m terribly color blind. Red? Green? Not good for wiring. She was disappointed at that revelation, especially when I reminded her it’s carried in the mother’s genes.

I had career counselors in high school and college suggest a variety of things to me. Dentist, teacher, and pilot. I even thought long and hard about becoming a pastor, urged by my youth leader. So here I am, communicating for a big government organization, hoping my words fall on not-so-deaf ears.

I don’t know how I ended up here to be honest. I think I just stumbled here. But by God’s grace, it’s turned out all right. I wish I would have listened to advice over the years — like paying off my house, driving older cars, putting more money away for retirement. And when I quit college to join the Air Force, I had plenty of people tell me I would regret quitting college. They were right.

And yet… this arguing with the GPS has put me right where I am. And it’s here that God love me. I’m loved by others and I have others to love. I am aware of God’s grace in the every day, leaning, trusting, and simply crawling step by step.