Crossing the Line

In the first years that I was married, my then husband owned a photography company and we traveled every weekend to shoot, sell or deliver family portraits. I have no idea how many miles we drove in our old blue van, but I'm sure it was thousands. For the first couple of years, at least one of us was in college, so we would often leave town late on Friday evening and drive through the night to reach our destination. We would then work all day on Saturday and Sunday, and drive through the night again to get home in time to be in class on Monday morning. Sometimes when I think about those trips and those years, I wonder how I was able to physically do what I did back then. I think about how it never bothered me to drive for hours and hours on back country roads in the dead of night. I never thought about a deer darting out into the path of our van ... never thought about having a flat tire out in the middle of nowhere ... never thought about another car crossing the center line and hitting us. Maybe the reason for my nonchalance on those lonely nighttime drives was my youth ... I simply didn't know enough about the dangers that were all around me to possess the level of concern that I should have.

Last Friday evening, I left after work to drive to Coffeyville, Kansas, for a speaking engagement on Saturday morning in the nearby little town of Edna. It was a beautiful fall evening, cool and sunny, and by the time I got on the road, a magnificent sunset was beginning to grace the prairie. After 30 minutes or so, I turned off of the interstate onto a two-lane highway that cut through the rolling hills of farmland. I wish I had my camera, I thought, this is absolutely spectacular. Cows roamed across the open fields, and occasionally I would drive past a large farmhouse or a giant barn. As the sun dipped lower in the sky, however, I found myself hoping that the two-lane part of my drive would end before it got completely dark. Little did I know at the time that my entire drive ... all three hours of it ... would be on two-lane highways, and it's probably a good thing I didn't know before I hopped in my car to begin my journey because I'm sure I would have been completely freaked out.

It's amazing how dark it gets away from the city ... no street lights, no glow of businesses in the distance, no light whatsoever save the cars zooming past me only a few feet away from my own car. My admiration for the beauty of the land around me quickly dissolved into a desire to reach my destination quickly so that I could end the nerve-wracking drive. As the minutes rolled into hours on the two-lane road, I found myself thinking about all those drives on similar highways so many years ago. I found myself frightened by how deserted the road was. I found myself pondering how easily a car could cross the center line. I can't see very well at night ... thanks to diabetes, I have a halo effect around lights that makes night driving somewhat challenging ... and each time I would meet an oncoming car, the headlights would almost blind me. I gripped the steering wheel and focused on the white line on the right side of the road rather than the bright lights coming toward me while I chanted, "Don't cross the line ... don't cross the line ... stay where you belong."

I've come to the conclusion that life is one big teaching field for God ... He's always trying to get my attention and teach me a lesson. The farther I drove, the more I thought about line crossing and how many times in my life I've crossed lines that I shouldn't have ... lines of thought, lines of speech, lines of behavior ... I've crossed lots of lines in my life, and every single time without fail, it's had a bad outcome. As I thought about how many times I've either wandered over or deliberately driven across the lines that God has placed along the way to keep me safe, I couldn't help but think about how much easier it is to cross the lines when I'm surrounded by darkness. When I'm traveling in the light, it's easier to see where I'm supposed to be and where the lines on the road are.

Driving home on Saturday, God's deep truths from the night before were still pounding deeply in my heart and mind. It was another beautiful fall day, but in the light of day, the road that had terrified me the night before didn't frighten me at all. In fact, I had the windows down and the sunroof open, and had music from my iPod blasting through the speakers in the car. This is a breeze, I thought as I cruised down the two-lane road once again. I don't know what I was so afraid of last night ... it's just another road. And that's when it happened ... God smacked me right in the head to make sure the lesson from the previous night was securely planted in my heart. No ... really ... smacked me in the head. Well, actually, He stung me in the head. All of a sudden, without warning, I felt something hit my forehead right between my eyebrows ... and it hurt, a lot. I fought my initial impulse to slam on the brakes and slowed down and pulled over on the side of the road ... no shoulder, I might add, I had to pull into the grass to get my car off the highway. I looked in the mirror certain that I would see blood gushing down my face, but all I saw was a small red spot. What in the world hit me? And how could that little spot make my head feel like it's on fire and like someone sliced me with a knife?

I'll spare you the details, but after getting back on the road and driving about five minutes holding napkins with ice from my lunch box on my aching head, I had to make another sudden exit off the road and it was then that I realized what had happened just minutes before. A large bee of some sort had flown in my window and stung me on the forehead ... I knew it was a bee because my second stop was precipitated by said bee landing on the front of my shirt while I was driving, and I'm sure he intended to sting me again. Don't laugh, I could see it in his buggy bee eyes ... he was going to sting me again. When I finally made sure there were no more bees in my car and got back on the road, you can be sure that I drove the remainder of the way home with all the windows up and the sunroof securely closed.

So here's the thing ... I had been concerned about me or someone else crossing the line on the road in the dark the night before. And then, right in the middle of the day when I least expected it, I crossed the line both times the bee entered my world. Had another car been traveling toward me ... well, you can figure that one out yourself. And God's lesson? Day or night, darkness or light, I have to be vigilant about line crossing ... I have to stay focused on Him because I never know when a bee may fly in and sting me. I'd say God had more in mind than me speaking last weekend ... I'd say He intended for me to listen to Him in a big, big way.