Make a U-Turn If Possible

So I have a special friend I take with me everywhere I go. She isn't the best listener, but she tells it like it is no matter what. It's refreshing to have someone in your life who is brutally honest. And although sometimes her counsel sends me in unexpected directions, I trust her advice explicitly.

She is the voice of my GPS. Or as I call her...Gerty.

I don't know how I ever lived without her. And since my husband has been out of town for 5 weeks, I've had a lot of extra quality time with her. I have found myself pondering the inherent symbolism of my utter dependence on an electronic gadget. I have decided that really Gerty has many life lessons to share with me.

I will be the first to confess that sometimes the routes Gerty maps are not the most direct. Maybe I take the long way now and then...but ultimately I always arrive at the desired destination. I had a life-map all planned out by the time I got to college too...and guess what? Not everything worked out according to my plan. Unbelievable, no? However, I look around at where I am in life right now and realize that maybe I just took the scenic route to get here.

Until 3 weeks ago, Gerty had never once let me down. So I was surprised when running an errand to our new School District building, Gerty directed me to take a right on a seedy looking alley. My instincts were that this was some kind of mistake, so I kept going for another block and discovered a dead end. Turning around, I decided to risk the narrow alley. A hundred yards in, I hit another dead end. I could see through a barbed wire fence the main road that the GPS was leading me too, but due to the construction of some new city buildings, there was now no longer an outlet from the narrow street I was on. So after a quick, 17 point turn, I backed out and turned south to find a street that would get me were I was heading. At first I felt enormously let down by my navigator, but after a while I realized this was analagous to real life as well. There are times in our lives for all of us when we're driving along smoothly and an unexpected road-block appears in our path. Sometimes we have to find another way to travel for a while. Maybe we'll have to go in the wrong direction for a minute...or at slower speeds, but eventually we can find our way back to the main road.

When we go on long trips, Gerty sometimes says things like, "Stay on the road..for..over... 300 miles." It's like the days of relative calm in my life...sometimes the routine might seem monotonous, but those times represent a chance to catch my breath and savor the little things. I hit one of these long stretches when I was in the baby-stage...changing diapers, late-night feedings, filling many physical needs. Now I find myself on an entirely new stretch, full of more twists and turns and I look back to those monotonous days with a different admiration.

My kids' favorite thing to hear from the GPS is "Make a U-turn if possible." I'm not sure why, but they get a huge kick out of this...probably because it means Mom blew it and made a mistake. But again, in my analogy, there are choices and options I have taken in my life that have led me in the exact opposite direction I wanted to be heading. The only thing to do at those times is to make that U-turn and find your way back.

And sometimes Gerty says, "Take the second left turn."

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.