Learning Honesty and Discipline from the Highway

Has God attempted to speak to you about something you consider trivial or that you know you shouldn't participate in?

BETHPAGE, TN (Catholic Online) - I am a legend of sorts. My notoriety as a motor vehicle operator is a well acknowledged fact even to my neighbors, friends and extended family. Five years ago I shocked them all when I blew up my husband's cherished '78 4x4. I tried to start it after he had removed the carburetor (who knew?!) on the windiest day on record for years. It was engulfed in flames high enough to been seen ten miles away sooner than the time it took to open the hood, and required several bemused firemen and their screaming trucks to put it out.

Although I was not the first to do so, a riding lawn mower with a sticky gear shift somehow landed upside down at the bottom of our creek while under my control. Thinking it was in reverse, I gunned the accelerator to back away from the edge of a hill and found myself soaring over the precipice while negotiating a graceful leap off the back of the mower. While I managed to avoid being pinned to the creek bed, I walked home dripping algae and fish water with a crayfish clinging to my shirt tail.

According to my three year old son, policemen give mama mail, and this summer my eleven year old asked my father, a retired state patrolman, why he stopped at the stop sign at the end of our road since his mother never does. It is for these reasons I was the butt of all the hilarity at our last family gathering.

I guess my husband and oldest son were looking for moral support as they related my foibles in great comedic detail, and insisted they have worn out the grip handles on the door frame of my car. We laughed till we cried, because everyone knows I get it from my mother, who gets it from hers!

I recently backed over a boat that had been surreptitiously parked directly behind my car. It wasn't until my husband returned home from a fishing trip that I wondered if the leak that almost sunk his boat was my fault. When we first moved to the country, I got three speeding tickets in one year, but only because the highway is like an interstate out here.

Because I am a firm believer in justice, I have never tried to get out of receiving a speeding ticket, and have, therefore, been to traffic school four times for tickets in two counties and two cities. My father was a career state patrolman, and I know exactly how many miles an hour over the speed limit I can drive without being ticketed, and many other very useful items of safety trivia. This makes my record all the more surprising, and in response, I resorted to setting my cruise control on the highway and driving to town exclusively on back roads whenever I can.

Light Your Virtual Prayer Candle For a Loved One

So you can imagine my bewilderment when, last week, I found myself signing another little piece of mail pushed through the car window. While I prayed for another warning, I thanked God that my oldest son was not in the car to tell on me when I got home, but God's will was clear through a city cop hiding behind the rise of a hill and holding a handheld radar detector on a lightly traveled back road.

How many times has God attempted to correct this undisciplined and even dangerous behavior in my life? I know the answer is many times - many tickets, many warnings, many trips to traffic school that defrayed ballooning insurance rates, many jokes and sideways glances regarding my driving, and the truth of this embarrasses and shames me.

As I drove away from the scene of the crime, the Lord asked me if something awful would have to happen before I finally took this issue seriously. It is a testament to His grace and patience that He has protected me and my family for so long while I laughed away this glaring lack of discipline and self-control. What a horrible example to everyone of my faith. What I know, is that He is not laughing.

I noticed the call to repentance in the readings in the last several months."Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away" (Acts 3:19). "Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken" (Is. 1:18-20).

I always expect the Lord to speak to me through the readings, but it was when I recently heard this one that I began to feel He may have been talking about my recent ticket and my chronically negligent driving, "We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin" (Rom. 6:6).

Is there a sin you are laughing off as just a quirk of your personality like I so often did with my negligent driving? Where has God attempted to speak to you about something you consider trivial, or that you know you shouldn't participate in but believe it won't really hurt anything or is too small to matter? With me, it was on the highway. Sin is destructive stuff, and a reticence to acknowlege it can become an invitation to more serious consequences.

Enjoy Daily Readings? Pay it Forward

My husband has always been the one to suffer from my driving negligence: spending his precious free time repairing damage I have caused, pulling the mower out of the creek and water out of its motor, towing away the burnt-out skeleton of a beloved truck, finding a place in the budget for court costs and traffic school, sending up prayers when I travel to the parents' with the kids and worrying anxiously till we get home.

Eleven now, my son is learning my driving habits and will too soon be behind the wheel himself. My long history of bad driving habits must be dealt with. I have tolerated it for too long. I confess it to Almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters. I have sinned through my own fault, for many years, and it must stop. It will stop, with the help of the Lord. Won't you join me?

-----

Sonja Corbitt is a Catholic Scripture teacher, study author and speaker. She is a contributing writer for Catholic Online. Visit her at www.pursuingthesummit.com and www.pursuingthesummit.blogspot.com.

---

'Help Give every Student and Teacher FREE resources for a world-class Moral Catholic Education'