Stop

We teachers have enjoyed the good ole two-hour delay twice this week.  It was a nice gift from above in easing back into the morning routine after Christmas break.  Not that we really get to come in two hours late like the kids, but we do manage to slink in at least twenty minutes late.  Today (Thursday) we were back on regular schedule since the temperature finally hit freezing yesterday.  And Thursdays are morning meeting days for my grade level, which means that twenty minutes I’d been cheating on came back to bite me and I had to be at work twenty minutes early today instead.

I rushed around the house and made it out the door, school bag and lunch in one hand, Mountain Dew in the other.  I was watching the clock all the way to school, as I do every Thursday, wondering if I’d actually make it to the conference room by the 7:30 start time (I’m about 50/50 on that one).  About 7:23, I had to brake for a red light and I’m sure I audibly sighed, figuring that I was again going to be beat by my co-worker who actually gets herself AND two toddlers ready and out the door each morning and STILL manages to saunter into the meeting looking more together than me.  “Oh, well,” I thought, and leaned my head back on the headrest. 

That’s when I actually looked up, and saw this (see below).  I smiled, and reminded myself how lucky I am that my morning drive takes me east so I get to see plenty of beautiful sunrises.  I’m not at all a morning person so the fact that I can even find a good point of a morning drive is a miracle in itself.  Next, I grabbed my phone from my cup holder and took this shot.  In these days of Instagram, we have to always be ready, right?

But when I looked down at the photo as the light turned green, I realized that it spoke to more to me than I could put in an Instagram caption.   It pretty much sums up my life for the past few years, and I’m sure the same could be said for many of us.  How many times do we travel along, sure of the route we have planned for ourselves, only to have our path blocked?  It’s true of the little things and the big things- but what matters, every single day, is what we do while we’re at the red light. 

Too many times, I’ve become fixated on the stoplight, and never looked past it to the beauty that God wants me to take in while I wait.  “Never again,” I whispered to myself, and to God, this morning as I drove along.  Never again…