Our Stories
The Uglier Side
By David Smith | posted 10/30/2008
"Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling." (Philippians 2:12)
I'm a slow driver. I like to think it's because my senses are keenly aware of everything going on around me and the car and that I drive slowly because in order to take all those inputs into account in making my next driving decision, I have to reduce speed to allow for greater reaction time. The truth is that I'm just slow at most things.
So I pulled out onto 104th Avenue headed toward Avondale and found a large SUV right on my tail. Pulling onto this street involves small blinds in both directions, so I may not have seen him when I turned and in that case, I cut him off. At any rate, I was going too slowly for his tastes so he honked at me which, lately, has really been irritating me, especially when the speed limit is 25 through this area. Remembering my driver's education from 22 years ago, I tapped on the brakes with the polite message of "Please stop following me so closely." Well, okay I skipped that part and went straight to laying on the brakes hard and slowing down a lot more. This did not please the driver behind me at all.
He decided that kicking his dog this morning wasn't enough, so he pulled around me on a two lane road, got in front of me and then gave me a taste of my own medicine by slowing down. He did me one better by stopping completely and putting on his hazards before reaching the stop light. As I reflect on this, he was probably considering getting out of his car at this point.
Realizing I had pushed the wrong button on this guy, I just sat patiently and waited. I was prepared to wait for hours until he decided he was ready to move. He moved into the left turn lane and I moved into the right, putting us window to window. He rolled down his window and waved to me and I waved back with four more fingers than he did. He began shouting a lot of things at me, none of which I could hear with my window rolled up and with both my boys in the back seat, that's probably best. I smiled at him and continued to wave with all five fingers and he pointed at me both vertically and horizontally and continued yelling at me.
When the light turned green and we both went our ways, my heart started beating again and the boys asked me why the man was yelling. I explained that he felt like I did something wrong to him and was upset about it.
Fast-forward a couple hours as I thought about the incident and all the different ways it could have ended. What would I have said had we had a more face-to-face verbal exchange? I was coming up with all sorts of witty retorts and how I would have remained unemotional and let him get as angry with me as necessary. He was clearly in the wrong. I think he was driving too fast and I had every right to try to slow him down and get him away from the back of my car. Yeah, I'm completely in the right here. I didn't do anything to provoke him, I was just being my good little Christian self heading to my church office to help with some moving issues. In walks the Holy Spirit:
"In the moment you stepped on your brakes you stopped looking at him with God's eyes. In that moment your disappointment in your finances and your parenting and your personal and spiritual life came together and you decided to blame that other driver for all of them. He's not what's wrong with the world, you're what's wrong with the world."
Okay, the last statement is my interpretation of what he said. But you know, he's right. I did fail in that moment. Given my chance to extend God's grace to another individual and I failed. I plan it out in my head how I'm going to show grace and kindness to my neighbor, but like the parable, I didn't expect this to be my neighbor. My knee jerk reaction (which I believe tells more about who I am) was to irritate the other driver right back. I wasn't thinking anything about what the other driver was going through. I didn't offer him the other cheek.
Where do I go from here? After thoroughly boring my boys at the church office, I took them on a walk at Marymoor. On our way back I stopped at a bench and told them how I had made a mistake. That my first reaction was a dangerous one and could have caused an accident and hurt them. I forgot to include the part about how God calls us to be better than that, so I hope they get that from Sunday School.
As we prayed before bed that evening, I asked God to forgive me for the way I had behaved. I hate praying like this because I feel like I'm praying at them, but I want them to know this is what you do when you do wrong. You ask for forgiveness from the only one qualified to give it. I also asked that if I ever had the opportunity to make things right that I could do it to God's glory.
It's been a couple weeks since this happened and I still think about it. I think about how I reacted and how he reacted. I love to hear how other people have dealt with situations like this and I file their experience away with the hope that one day I will be able to use it. The truth is I will never get to use it. Every situation is different. I am different. The other person is different. Like Moses with his staff and the rock. Both times, water came out of the rock, but it wasn't God's plan the second time. He knew they needed something else, but Moses went for the quick fix.
I've been thinking about Philippians 2:12 and what it means to work out my salvation. I think it's situations like this when we are tempted to go with what's always worked, or what's quick and easy, but God wants us to work it out. To lay aside the tried and true and dig deeper to see what the situation needs and provide that. If it seems hard, remember the last part of the verse says, "...with fear and trembling."
To respond to this message, email Dave at dave@sphericalcow.net.
