When you're the passenger of a car, the perspective is different than when your the driver. Primarily being the driver in the last 10ish years and not so much the passenger, I've come to find this time in Northern Ireland to be an interesting experience. I'm the passenger but I'm still sitting on the side of the car where I would have driven in the States, but I've no control. I'm on the wrong side of the road, yet traffic moves freely and I'm the only one trying to find comfort every time I get in. Though I know how to drive I don't get to drive. The perspective isn't bad, it's just different. Sometimes I hold my breath or grab on to something because the driver's actions aren't what I would have done. When some one else is the driver you have to trust their abilities, for better or for worse. There are times I think I'd much rather be the passenger in the back seat than in the front. Yet, the back seat comes with it's own issues.
Yet, I've done a lot of sitting in the back seat of a car in the last week as I travelled all over Ireland. A couple of friends just came to visit me from the States and while they were here, we took advantage of the time and a car, and we toured in a ring around the Emerald Isle. I was in the back seat for this trip. These 5 days, while we were traveling, I realized the perspective from the back isn't always great either.
"Look!" yells my friend driving as he sees one thing. With a pointed finger, my other friend who's in the front seat passenger says, "Do you see that over here?" Meanwhile I'm in the back, scrambling to turn my head fast enough, or bend low enough, to see whatever "it" is. Even If I was lucky enough to be on the right side of the car, I found there just no great perspective for anything except the head of the person in front of me.
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| My multiple views that weren't quite as amazing from the back. |
This situation could be anyone, but it describes my friends and I, several times over our holiday travels. As the back seat passenger, I knew I was on this awesome road trip. I had small glimpses of cool things but never the full image.
This is where I've been feeling that life is lingering lately— in this state of trusting, and changing perspectives, and tiny glimpses, all the while knowing that I'm on an incredible adventure.
It's actually been incredibly difficult to sit and write a blog recently for many reasons. I want to but there's been guilt, there's been lack of time, there's been more pressing matters, there's been holidays, there has been fear. Honestly, there's been more than I can write about. It seems like every week, I became excited and sat down to write a blog about the awesome things are happening, but then I'd be struck with a change of thought. It's like I caught the glimpse, and wanted to see and explore more of it, but it went by. Suddenly the next thing is coming up, and I barely saw the last thing, so I wonder if it was really there at all.
I wrote previously that I was having some reoccurring dreams of
crashes and speeding cars. In some of these dreams of speeding cars, I've found myself in the driver's seat with no control, or in the passenger seat/back seat while the car goes without a driver. This is life now currently. It is truly an incredible adventure I'm on. It's one I keep trying to control and I can't. My perspectives are changing constantly.
It's a good time, but it's an unknown time. It is transition. It is forward motion.
On Sunday, during worship, we sang the song "
Come Away With Me." It's a Jesus Culture recording. The lyrics go:
Come Away with me,
Come away with me
It's never too late
It's not too late
for you
I have a plan for you
It's gonna be wild
it's gonna be great
it's gonna be full of me
This is my reassurance and my constant—God has brought me on this wild adventure. I know he's the driver with the plan.
