Faith

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Straight Ahead

I finally decided to quit staring at the DEAD END guard rail sign into which drove my car into. I left the rusty, overheated Chevette facing nose first into the only piece of metal that kept me from involuntarily cliff diving.

Then, I decided to walk back to the road I was supposed to be on. That crash was like shock therapy for me. Afterwards, I wasn't depressed anymore.

Instead, I felt energized, and the endless, needless list of every day worries disappeared. I no longer took thought to how will I pay the bills, or when will I finish that writing project, or why I didn't get a raise at the Greentown Journal, for whom I write.

I was driving about 45 miles an hour into that guard rail, because I didn't know the road ended. I thought it was the county road I always took, but it wasn't. Then, I started walking back to the road I thought I was supposed to be on.

I wondered how I would have missed my turn. It's like the devil switched the street signs when I wasn't looking.

I hate it when that happens, don’t you?

My energy depleted again, thinking of my battered car, now a half mile behind me. I remember the front end like a cheep soda can. The front bumper had scraped some of the paint off the guard rail.

As I wearily strolled along, I gritted my teeth and rapidly shook my head in self disapproval. How I could have been so stupid, I asked myself. I also condemned myself for not watching where I was going.

Why I drove so fast in the wrong direction, I will never know.

However, the further I walked away from the self-inflicting accident, the fainter the memory of my crushed automobile became. I became more confident that the right road was up ahead. I was thinking to myself that it just had to be. After all, the dead end is almost a mile behind now, I reasoned.

Five miles down the road, I had the faith that if I missed the turn, that I could walk to the street that I recognized, and call someone for help.
I just knew, the direction for the help I needed was not to the right, not to the left, but straight ahead. I thank God, for keeping me on the right path.

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