A tree branch and a car stuck in sand.

It is funny how we have become accustomed to certain things belonging in certain places. There are places we would not dream of going today, yet our grandparents at our age had no problems going there, and they were not as well equipped as we are. It took a bit of coaxing to get my mother to drive down a coastal road that she used to travel on as a child with me and my children in the car with her – the problem was it was a dirt road. She kept saying that she was not in the right car to travel down these roads. I have to admit I was enjoying her discomfort, she pointed out to my children places she would never drive to nowadays that she had went as a child. In my amusement I asked her how she had got there, I mean there were no off road vehicles around in those day. I am talking about at least forty years ago and my mother is pointing out big sand dunes.

“Oh, we just drove there.” She simply replied. “But you must have got stuck a lot?’ I asked her. She thought for a moment “Yes, all the time.” A memory came to me of me as a teenager out with some friends standing around the car we were traveling with that was bogged in mud, and while they were trying to get help, I was placing branches under the wheel of the car, both behind and in front and shortly after driving out the bogged car. “You used branches a lot?” “We used anything we could find.” I started to realize that maybe some of my grandparent’s habits had rubbed off on me. I glanced again at the big sand dunes we were driving past and began to realize that nothing would stop them from going to their favorite beach spot as a family, not the big sand dunes that they would stop constantly and dig free the sand from the wheels. They had no air-conditioned cars – yet they still went.

Today I can at times feel like it can be a big struggle to get where I need to go, I don’t always want the challenges of the big sand dunes, digging out wheels to keep me moving ahead. I am often challenged to keep my eyes fixed firmly on Jesus and the journey I am being taken on – it is not always smooth. Sometimes in the difficult times we need to take a breath and go back to the simple faith of just believing and knowing who we are in God.




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