Even though it’s a skill I don’t use very often, I’m glad I learned how to drive a car with a manual transmission when I was a teenager. But I must say, the learning how nearly did me in.
As far back as I can recall, my parents didn’t own a car with a manual transmission. I cut my driving teeth in the early ’70s in our family “tuna boats”—big Buicks, Pontiacs and Chryslers with automatic transmissions.
A couple of my closest friends, however, owned Volkswagen Beetles with manual transmissions and they were determined to make me learn how to drive their cars. (In at least one case, the phrase “designated driver” comes to mind.)
From time to time, they would cajole me into the driver’s seat, bark out mostly incoherent instructions, and laugh their heads off as I lurched us down the street, grinding gears the whole way.
Learning to stop and start again on hills was a nightmare. How could anyone with only two feet operate three pedals and keep a car from rolling backwards when the light turned green?
It also took me awhile to figure out how and when to shift to a higher gear. Those VW engines screamed for mercy until I got the hang of it.
It’s occurred to me lately that I still have trouble shifting gears—not car gears, but life gears.
I’ve somehow managed to become busier in my late 50s than I’ve been in many years. I’m trying to find a higher gear and sometimes feel like I’m going herky-jerky through my days much like I did in those VWs on the streets of my hometown decades ago.
This busyness commenced last year when my husband and I felt unmistakably called to a larger, younger, busier church. We suddenly found ourselves in a flow that was a bit quicker than we were used to.
Within a few months, I was called to coordinate this church’s women’s ministry—a position I held for many years at our previous church but thought I might “retire” from in our new fellowship.
Guess what I discovered? “Retire” is not in God’s dictionary. Neither is “neutral,” so I’m learning again to shift and run in a higher gear. And some days, it seems like my engine is screaming for mercy.
It’s good, but not exactly easy.
I sometimes find myself wondering, “What am I doing? How can I get all this done? How can I keep up with all these 20-somethings? Why do I always feel like my brain is going to explode?”
But then I realize this is my chance to do exactly what I’ve always said I wanted to do—to hit the tape running, to serve God with everything I have for as long as He gives me strength, grace and opportunities.
Sure, it’s easier to take it slow, to stay in first gear. But as followers of Christ, I’m pretty sure we don’t have the right to make that choice for ourselves.
We have to go where God calls, shift up when He tells us to, and trust Him for what we need. It may sound like a cliché, but it’s true: Where God guides, He provides.
New mercies, new strength, a new gear.
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” – Galatians 2:20
“…always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.” – I Corinthians 15:58b