why we learners must learn to trust
“Aren’t you in the wrong seat?” my friend says, her grin wide, calling out to Zoe.
Funny thing is, I’m the only one in the car who feels misplaced.
The sky glittered with stars, and we walked through the parking lot, and I saw Zoe turn to look at me, tucking a length of brassy hair behind her ear. “Can I?”she silently asked. Can I grow up a little more now, Mom? My feet ached and I wanted to plant them firm, to stop time still before it slips completely away. I wanted to say, I’m too tired now. This learning to drive reminds me of the early days, when time came for me to let my babies learn to manage the stairs, and I knelt behind them, easing their legs up and down, my tired mama hands begging just to lift and carry them. Letting my children grow has often been an exercise in self-discipline.
“Would you like to drive?” I asked her, though the fact that I cannot stand over the car and manipulate it with my hands like I did her soft, round baby legs, made me want to deny her the practice.
“Yes, I do,” she said, which of course I knew, reading my picked up cross as though from a map of constellations beaming from the bends and creases in her eyes and mouth. Something about the tilt of her head when she looked back at me told me she had some question as to whether this time I’d say no. But I recognize that these lessons are mine as well as hers, that I get to grow up a little more too, and that times when I feel ready rarely come. So I asked the question she was right now reluctant to put into words. Maybe she’d seen the yearning for home in my stride or noticed something in my expression.
And now, as my friend leans out her window and smiles, I want to widen my eyes and nod, ever so slightly, so only my friend will notice. Yes, she’s in the wrong seat. But I laugh, and my friend glides on by, and I wait while Zoe checks all the mirrors for the right view.
“Okay,” Zoe announces, and I watch her remember to put her foot on the brake before she shifts into drive, and I tell myself to let go of the passenger side door. Zoe actually drives well for someone with so little experience, but it’s that lack of wisdom, that immeasurable depth of insight she doesn’t even yet understand, that makes me involuntarily press my toes into an invisible brake on my side of the car as she rounds the curve to leave the parking lot. The car bounces into and out of a rut in the road that’s new to Zoe but familiar to me. “Sorry ’bout that,” she says lightly, and I look out the window, willing myself to choose to teach the most important lessons without discouraging her.
At the end of the driveway we pause. It’s a difficult intersection on a busy road; we have to cross two lanes of traffic to turn left into an oncoming two. Zoe hesitates, indecisively inching forward, and although her cautious nature mostly makes her a better driver, in this case, I find it terrifying. She looks left, across two unusually empty lanes, and back right at the other two that are whizzing with traffic we have to join. And then she looks back left, at the two still empty lanes.
“So, can I go?” She says.
It’s one of those spots where traffic changes quickly.
“Looks like it to me,” I say. “If you move quickly, you can get to the middle and wait.”
She’s still learning how to do quickly with control. Carefully, she eases us out of the driveway and into the road, and I glance left at two lanes of headlamps suddenly hurtling–seemingly out of nowhere–toward us. She’s not moving fast enough.
“Go quickly, go quickly, go quickly!” I say with a rush of adrenaline, pressing one hand against the glove box in front of me, bracing myself.
Narrowly, we careen past traffic and into the median lane, from whence Zoe breezily merges into traffic.
“Are you okay?” she says, her voice surprisingly, annoyingly calm.
“Well, you did the right thing,” I tell her, recovering. “Once you’ve committed, you’ve got to go.”
“Are you okay?” she asks again, wearing the tiniest grin. “I knew I was going to make it.”
Well, that makes one of us, I’m thinking, but instead I say, “You did?”
“Yes, I did,” she says.
“Well, I’m glad you kept your wits about you,” I say, my voice still gushing, like a river.
“Are you okay?” she says again, which makes me notice my hands–one pressed flat against my chest, the other white-knuckling the door.
“I’ll be fine,” I say, taking a breath, pulling my hands into my lap. You have no idea what it’s like to have no control, I’m thinking. To be at the mercy of someone who doesn’t know how to drive.
Zoe objects when I say this out loud. She says, “I know how; I just haven’t done it much yet.” I keep reiterating that wisdom makes a person teachable, that the more we know, the more we realize we don’t know. And all this teaching her to drive has taught me a lot about how much homage I pay to the illusion of control. In some shadowy part of my heart, I still believe that if I’m at the wheel, I’m safe. I think I know enough to make the decisions that will keep me out of harms way, that I’m practiced enough to do things at the right pace, when the truth is that my perspective is so limited I often can’t fully appreciate the danger hurtling right toward me. I argue with God about these things; tell Him I know what I’m doing, reject His Word sometimes when it gushes over my heart like a river. Trust me with all your heart, He says, and don’t lean on your own understanding. Acknowledge me, and I’ll keep you straight (Proverbs 3:5, my paraphrase).
I look at my daughter, watch her measuring her position in the lane. “What’s the speed on this road again?” she asks, and suddenly I know that this is exactly how I live, God within me. He’s the one with all the perspective. He knows the road; He knows the right speed. I’d be foolish not to trust him.
