I’d like to squelch the rumor circulating the St. Louis area that if my husband wants to hide something from me, he puts it in the oven. Totally untrue. Because my husband would never hide anything from me.
Maybe I mentioned before that a friend once told me I should stop the pretense and just get rid of the stove altogether. Of course, I told her that would be deranged. “De-ranged”? Get it?
I know it’s not right, but I still so often relish life in the fast food lane. Relish it, mustard it and maybe mayo it up too. My car is a giant take-out bag.
Every once in a while I’ll get to the end of a week and realize I haven’t used silverware. It doesn’t happen quite as frequently now that my kids are grown. But I’ll tell you right now, when those five children were younger, at the beginning of a school year I would enter my minivan—then start making the rounds to soccer practice, tennis matches, friends’ houses, this meeting, that game and the other concert—and I would get out of that vehicle nine months later when school was out. Then, wouldn’t you know it, we would get back in the minivan and drive across the country for vacation.
I confess, every once in a while, the kids and I would play hooky, skip several of the scheduled events and—joy, oh joy—get out of the car. It was awesome to see ground that wasn’t moving, yes, but even more than that, it was good to hang with my fam. Without seatbelts.
If you’re in one of those driving-in-circles seasons and spending more time than you ever thought you would trying to decide between tacos or burgers, there’s good news. Subs or pizza, north or south—none of those are such a big thing. You can have perfect direction. Proverbs 3:6 is a fave verse of many. “Think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths,” (HCSB). Now that really will steer us in the right direction. Verse five gives us the key, as it were. Trust. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding,” (Proverbs 3:5, HCSB). Trust, not in the schedule or in my own plans. But wholehearted trust in the Lord and in His plan for me.
I hope I never let this passage lose its drive in my heart. I don’t want it to become so familiar that I forget how beautifully it can change the way we do life. Talk about a truth to remember. A few verses earlier, we read, “Don’t forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commands; for they will bring you many days, a full life, and well-being,” (Proverbs 3:1-2, HCSB). Living according to His truth leads to a full life—a life full of His goodness. And I’ll pick a life full of His goodness over a calendar full of busyness any day. And a gazillion times more over a car full of burger sacks.