I’ll confess I’m crazy, but I didn’t get there by myself. Somebody has been driving me crazy.
I didn’t always know I was crazy until a few years ago The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage, wife Martha, looked at me and said, “Are you crazy or what?”
Reflecting on the past, she was likely correct. I am crazy, but I’m not the one behind the wheel driving me there.
Our town used to be small and quiet, with not much traffic. We had snowbird traffic in the winter, but then traffic almost died in the summer. I enjoyed those days.
That’s changed in the last few years. I can’t tell the difference between snowbird time and summertime. The traffic is just simply crazy.
Nearly every day, we hear news of a traffic accident within the scope of our neighborhood.
Last week, we drove across town to our Sunday morning ministry. The traffic was a bit jammed, slower than usual, and some people behind us seemed to be in a hurry. They couldn’t get around us, so they beeped their horns for us to hurry up.
The more the person behind us blew their horn, the slower Martha drove. I could see one driver was very anxious and blowing his horn.
Finally, the traffic eased and he could drive around us. As he did, he shook his fist and pointed us toward heaven. He used the wrong finger, but everybody makes mistakes. Martha looked in his direction and gave him one of her signature smiles.
I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall when he got home. As for me, I just kept quiet, tried not to smile too much, and pretended I didn’t see what happened.
On that drive, I wondered, “Where did she learn that kind of driving?”
I almost blamed it on her father. Then the truth hit me smack in the face like a pie. I was the one who taught her how to drive after we married. I sighed deeply and thought, “How did I get it all wrong?”
It’s very hard to keep quiet around my wife. She seems to know what I’m thinking before I even think it. Halfway home, she glanced at me and said, “What are you thinking?”
This can go either way. Either I get in trouble, or I say nothing.
“Are you thinking,” she finally said, “about the nice service we had this morning?”
Very few times, I’ve had an open door out of a situation. I smiled at her and said, “I loved your piano playing while we sang hymns this morning. It was wonderful!”
I’m not sure, but I think I dodged a bullet. That doesn’t happen often, which reminded me of a Bible verse.
“Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.”
— Ecclesiastes 7: 9
That verse appears on select highways across town. Why can’t people just rest and not be hasty in their lives? A hasty spirit leads to anger, which never solves any problem.
Dr. Snyder is a former pastor who lives with the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage, wife Martha, in Ocala, Fla. His email is [email protected].
