I went to the grocery store today. As I was leaving, I saw this older couple. They were in a gold-colored SUV. The man looked like my father and the woman reminded me of one of my friend’s mothers. As I walked up to put my purchases in the back of my car, they were parked right next to me and they were doing the same. I noticed that I moved much faster than they did. I put my cart in the same corral as the woman did. When I jumped into my car and started the engine, I noticed that the car to my left had begun to back out. I waited for that red car to back out. I put my car in reverse and then backed out a couple of inches and turned to see if the older couple had started to leave. The man was sitting in the driver’s seat, he saw my car move, he sighed, looked at me, and then waved me off with one hand like he was trying to get rid of an annoying fly circling his head. I backed out of the parking space and drove away smiling because I had seen my own father make that same frustrated gesture so many times before.
I smiled because he reminded me of my dad. The whole situation sort of made me miss my dad. As he became older, he just wanted to go about his life, at his own pace, and everything and everyone else was just a distraction that he wanted to wave away. That’s the thing with me though. Nothing really is a distraction. I feel like everything I see or hear or smell or taste or feel is a sensation that I should treasure and be thankful that I experienced it. I tried to notice the people around me. That couple probably didn’t even see me, but I saw them. I noticed them.
Something else interesting happened on my shopping trip. As I drove home, I was in the left lane of the street and there was a car in the right lane. I had this feeling that I needed to speed up because the other car wanted to get into the left lane. The other car didn’t signal. The driver didn’t do anything to indicate that they wanted to be in the left lane. And yet, I acted on my feeling. As soon as I sped up, the other driver moved into the left lane.
Both these situations are about faith. The older couple is about having faith in idea that every person I meet carries the light of God within them and even if they dismiss me with the wave of their hand and don’t recognize who I am, I can at the very least recognize that they are a miraculous creation of God. The driving situation is simply about realizing that I know more than I ever realized and if I just trust my own intuition, then I can sense more than I ever thought possible.
The world is an amazing place and I truly believe that I can get exactly what God intends for me to get out of life if I just have faith. I may not get what I think I want or need, but I know that I will get what’s in God’s plan for me even if it is a horrible fate.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
