GPS: RECALCULATING!

GPS: RECALCULATING

On a certain day after dropping my husband in Johannesburg, I tried to get back on the freeway to Pretoria. I took the right turn off ramp or at least the one I thought was right until I ended up in gangster land. I had my children in the car; it was getting dark and I was scared. Eventually after several wrong turns I saw a police van. I parked and broke down in tears as I tried to explain my situation to him. He laughed, tried to calm me down and gave me direction to the freeway.   He said the right turnoff was just ahead of me. After over an hour of driving in a maze, I told him he had to lead me there. He eventually did and we were home in less than an hour. 
That experience was the last straw. We decided to buy a GPS. We got a small one and tried so many voices available on the settings to navigate us through our trips. We tried the likes of the Australian guy, the English lady and the Frenchman and the old grandma. Unanimously the whole family agreed that the grandma's voice was the best. After I had missed a turning, she would said:  “You didn't listen to me. Now you have to turn around.” Driving above the speed limit will invite, “You are going too fast; you are making me dizzy.”  She entertained us to no end with her ingenious ways of giving directions. 

One would think that having a GPS solved all my navigation problems. It didn't! I sometimes took wrong turns for various reasons like not following directions- thinking the GPS was confused and that I knew better. Or sometimes it was simply because I couldn’t tell my left hand from the right. So something I heard  at those times was 'recalculating' Looking back at the times I had wasted petrol trying to get back on the right road, I should qualify for an award. It was always in my best interest to listen and obey the new command after recalculating. 

I guess it is the same in our lives. Sometimes, for different reasons we need to recalculate and listen to the next instruction before going off again. God has put so many GPSs around us and in us and failure to listen to them can keep us from reaching our personal best or even prove fatal. 

When we say this is the way I am; refuse to forgive; hesitant to change methods or life outlook, we are simple saying no to “recalculating”. Perhaps we need to re-evaluate our relationships with those closest to us and start rebuilding bridges we’ve burnt or pull down or walls we’ve erected thinking that we keep us safe. Wall can also isolate; overprotection equals to being in a prison. Recalculate!  

Some of us glory in family tendencies like anger and stubbornness and we fail to see how they are wrecking our lives. Recalculate!

 As mothers, perhaps it is time to do parenting differently or even reach out for help. Asking for help in most cases is a sign of strength. Weak people always try to cover up. Recalculate!

Maybe it is time to apply feminism differently in your marriage or throw away the societal and cultural expectations of being a woman, wife and mother that do not agree with God’s standard. Recalculate!

Let’s spend the week thinking of ways we need to recalculate and actually do so.

Take care and God bless.

I Bi Dem.