Monthly Archives: November 2011

Rules of the Road

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While running errands today I saw an interesting phenomenon: an 18-wheeler with big letters on the back that said, “Caution! Student driver!”

Was it a joke?

The giant truck was sitting at a red light poised to turn left. Watching from a distance, I realized it was no joke. When the light turned green, the truck inched its way around the corner, making a wide turn but not quite wide enough, his right wheels edging off the road. With his painfully slow movement, he saved his turn and continued forward, slowly crawling down the highway.

Later I Googled the name on the truck: Professional Drivers Institute. Sure enough, the semi I saw was part of a fleet of 18-wheelers used to teach drivers to maneuver the big-rigs. After 3 weeks of training a driver could become licensed and was ready for the real road.

The site says, “Each student is allowed their own semi-truck to drive on the range,” an on-site pavement much like the school parking lots where we learned to drive cars. It can’t be easy maneuvering a 53’ long behemoth around a set of tiny orange cones.

I never thought about truckers needing training. Weren’t they super-drivers who knew instinctively what to do when they first climbed high into the driver’s seat? Of course that would be goofier than handing car keys to a 15 year who’d never heard of “Rules of the Road.”

Most of life’s undertakings need a training period, from toilet training to trucking, and the most difficult training doesn’t involve toilets, trucks or anything else tangible.

How do children train for playground bullying? What prepares teens for high school peer pressure? Or newlyweds for marriage adjustments? Or new parents for ‘round the clock duty? Or the elderly for steady losses?

And how do we train for the ending of life?

I think of the Bible as my “Rules of the Road” book. Although God had many reasons for putting his instructions in writing, one of them was to train us for life. Scripture leaves no subject untouched. It’s as practical as any other how-to book and details not only what we should do but what we shouldn’t, complete with consequences. Of course taking advantage of biblical advice means we must regularly open the training manual. It doesn’t work to ask God what to do and then shun his answer-book.

Life-training isn’t easy. The Professional Drivers Institute requires only 50 hours behind the wheel before graduation, but God’s training program lasts a lifetime. The two curriculums do have one thing in common, though. PDI’s web site concludes by saying, “We’ll be there for you down the road, if the need should arise.”

 

And God says the same thing.

“For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” (1 Timothy 4:8)

Teaching by Example

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Marriage was one of God’s more creative ideas. Two idealistic people come together with high hopes for heaven on earth, then quickly realize the old adage about opposites attracting is true after all.

Of course putting opposites together was clever. God hoped the improbability of getting along would cause couples to seek his help, after which they’d have a good chance to make their marriage work, even thrive.

An old proverb that speaks truth is, “Friendship is the appreciation of similarities, and love is the appreciation of differences.” Every marriage needs its friendship component, but the glue that holds it together through tough times is the loving appreciation of differences.

Unfortunately it’s more likely we’ll try to change our partner than appreciate the differences. We think, “Why can’t everybody just be like me?”

Nate and I got married while he was still a law student. He was a coffee-holic who sipped from a bottomless mug as he studied, and I loved tea. In a restaurant, he’d watch as the waiter brought me a cup, saucer, tiny teapot of hot water, teabag and lemon wedge. “That looks like a lot of work,” he’d say. “Why don’t you just drink coffee?”

“Or you could drink tea!” I’d counter.

I wasn’t any good at making coffee and rarely made it for him. (Mr. Coffee hadn’t been invented.) He thought it was silly to buy a variety of teabags on our tiny budget. We just couldn’t see eye to eye.

Then one day Nate surprised me. “I’ve decided to try tea. As a matter of fact, I’m going to drink it for a whole year and try to like it.” I figured he had finally seen the value of thinking just like me.

Nate kindly followed through, getting acquainted with Earl Grey, Mint Medley and Lemon Zest. But at the end of that year, the coffee bean still had his heart. Eventually it won mine, too, although not because Nate asked me to forsake tea for a year. Actually he never insisted I think like him about anything. Looking back, I see that as true love, the appreciation of our differences.

Scripture tells us to look out for the interests of others, and to do unto others as we’d like them to do unto us. We’re also told to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. These things are to be done without first trying to change the other person. We’re to do them to imitate God, and when we do, he promises two good things: life will go better for us (including marriage), and he’ll reward our efforts.

I wish I could say I did as well as Nate did at appreciating marriage differences. He taught by example, and I guess it’s taken me until now to really figure out the lesson.

“If you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”  (Luke 6:33,36)

Cry it out.

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I’ve always been impressed when actors cry on cue. Recently I read the biography of Melissa Gilbert who played the part of Laura Ingalls on the TV series “Little House on the Prairie.” When an episode called for tears, she’d separate herself, close her eyes, and withdraw into a sad memory, focusing on it until she’d brought it from her past into her present. After several minutes, real tears would come.

I wonder if there’s a difference between coaxed tears and those that come when we’re trying to hold them back. If examined under a microscope, would scientists be able to tell the difference?

My friend Barb Ingraham wrote, “When scientists studied human tears, they discovered the purpose of the tears determined their chemical composition. Tears to cleanse foreign objects were different from tears of sorrow, which were different from tears of joy.”

When I read that, I thought immediately of our God who delights in tending to details, assigning a purpose to each one. He cares about our crying, keeps track of our tears, and ministers to the reason for our weeping. And it gets even better than that. God uses the product of our grief, the tears themselves, to help us. Barb wrote, “Tears of sorrow actually have natural anti-depressants that cause a literal lift in body and spirit.” We have an awesome, helpful God!

When I was a newlywed, I awoke one night feeling sad about something (can’t recall what) and started to cry. Climbing out of bed and heading into the next room, I sat on the couch and bawled my eyes out, wishing Nate would wake up and come looking for me. I desperately needed his arms around me but wasn’t going to wake him.

I sat on the couch sobbing for 15 minutes or so when suddenly there he stood in the doorway, his eyebrows up and his mouth hanging open. “What’s wrong?” he said.

“I’m sad.”

“What should I do?”

I looked up at him with my wet face and runny nose, aching to have him enfold me in his arms but wanting him to initiate it. (Such was the mindset of a newlywed.) Because he couldn’t think of anything else to do, he sat down next to me and put his arms around me, exactly what I’d longed for.

I melted into him with a tremendous sense of relief and gratitude. Before long my crying calmed to a sniffle, and we both went back to bed. The crisis had passed, because of his love.

Each of us cries because of a crisis, and it’s God’s love that can bring us through. We see it in his design of our specific tears, realizing he knows why we’re hurting and, more importantly, knows what we need. Whether it’s reassurance of his love or something more, he’ll make sure we get it. He may not take away our crisis, but he’ll be our shoulder to cry on as we move through it.

And he makes this additional promise:

“They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” (Psalm 126:5)