Detours

Last week my son needed a ride to a show in downtown Portland. In the seventeen years I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest, I have avoided this task as much as humanly possible.

If you’ve never driven in Portland, consider yourself lucky. There are a million one-way streets, and roads that won’t allow turns in either direction for blocks at a time. There almost always seems to be road construction going on wherever it is you need to be.

The worst part is that if you’re driving from Washington to Oregon, there’s only one way to accomplish this. There aren’t many options to get across the river (in a car) other than driving across one of the many bridges that connect the two states.

The concert my boy and his friend wanted to go to was important to them, and my hubby was out of town, so I figured I would step up and conquer my fears of getting lost, propelling the van into the river, or driving in perpetual circles.

Before we headed out, I printed out instructions that seemed pretty basic and I felt confident. As we crossed the bridge into Oregon, things seemed to be going well. Traffic was starting to slow, but otherwise, all was good.

A few minutes later things drastically changed. Traffic came to a complete stop… and that was only the beginning. As we slowly inched our way down the freeway, the road construction signs came into view.

I figured this was why rush hour was worse than usual, and prayed it would clear up soon. As we approached the exit that would lead us over the second bridge of the night (this one is a BIG one), I realized there were detour signs and my heart sank.

Of all the bridges in Portland, the one the instructions told me to take was closed. The detour took us across a different bridge, and it was just far enough away from the other to make the instructions make no sense to me.

I couldn’t find the street I was supposed to have turned on, and although I quickly figured out where I needed to be, the bumper to bumper cars and the one-way streets got me flustered.

I began second-guessing every decision on which way I should go, and started wondering if I’d ever get the boys where they needed to be. It seemed that everywhere I turned there was another detour or road closure. I didn’t know my way around, and had to rely on my instincts, as well as the guidelines from those instructions I’d printed.

This reminded me of all the detours life throws at us. It may seem like we have a million important and life changing decisions to be made, and each time we make one, we run into another bump in the road or a dead-end.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart;
do not depend on your own understanding.
Seek his will in all you do,
and he will show you which path to take.
Proverbs 3:5-6

These are times we pray for answers, and wish we had a book with all the answers. Wait a minute… we do! It’s called the B-I-B-L-E. This is where we figure out how to handle the ‘road construction’ that inevitably will cross our paths.

There’s nothing we’ll ever face that the Bible doesn’t cover. This is where our guidelines for life come from. If we follow these instructions, we’ll never be lost.

I’m not saying we won’t ever make a wrong turn, or go in the opposite direction four times during the same trip to drop off your son at a concert… but in the end, if we believe… we’ll always find our way home!

Tagged as: Bible, Bridges, Choices, Confusion, Detours, God, Portland, Roadwork