When The Road is Rough

If you’ve never spent time on a rough road, you may not know about the experience. You may be clueless if you don’t know what a “washboard” is. Bumpy roads can be huge dips and crevasses or the ripple effect as a tide looks when it closes in on the shoreline.

Either way, it’s a struggle to enjoy the journey when everything seems to be a challenging process to move forward.

I remember driving on brick-laid roads and the rapping sound of rubber slapping the joints. A little noisy, but smooth. Cobblestones may be a little rougher but very manageable. Imagine a seldom-used country road. Perhaps it’s only a dirt and gravel lane. With little maintenance, the washboard of ripples causes the tires to skip around. Uncomfortable. Then, drive in the frozen north, dealing with frost heaves! The road buckles and bends, and you may bottom out, blow a tire, or lose control!

When I first drove the Al-Can Highway to Alaska, helping my parents relocate to The Great Land, we had a great experience. Approximately 1,600 miles of the Canadian portion of the highway were unpaved. Mom’s childhood memories of poor suspension on rough country roads reminded her that we could go as fast as was comfortable and ride the top of the ridges. Be on the lookout for potholes, road heaves, and other such issues, but go fast, and it will seem like you are riding a smooth highway.

So we did—nary a problem.

I learned something about life this way. You can wend your way through all the upheavals of the path ahead, or you can fly down the road and hit the high points.

Life is much like your typical rough road. Plow through, push on, keep on keeping on. Or wend your way slowly through the stress of maintaining a sense of control.

Until and Unless

When life malfunctions at high speed, you can imagine the results. Preserve your sanity by taking life easy or blowing through the bumpy sections at high speed. You will pay the piper for whichever choice you make. Be like a bull in a china shop – rattling the shelves and damaging expensive items. Or, you can go through the same place as a cat might – sleek and turning every necessary way, so nothing is disturbed.

We all reach decision times differently. Uniquely. Past experiences may play a big part in our process of choice. Equally, sometimes we don’t take the time for a good decision tree. “If I do this, then that may be the result.” These are called conditional arguments or hypothetical syllogism and are the workhorse of deductive logic. If this, then that, else…what’s my option?

Sometimes we want a decision tree
that helps us move through life on a smoother path.
If that’s the case, you must take the time to make different choices!

I remember advice for getting through a muddy section of a dirt road. “Never stop!” What? “If you stop, you’re sunk!” Whoa! What? “It’s harder to make momentum from the struggle than to keep the momentum going as you plow through.”

Hmmm… The same advice is probably accurate with snow.

My first experience with getting stuck is a vague memory, but our family movies show us the story. We were at a gravel pit for a picnic and some swimming, and pea gravel is as tough to get out of as a muddy ditch! It took dad a long time to get us free from the pea…

Turn This Spiritual

Perhaps the most substantial challenge we have against any good decision is the base from which we learn to choose. The consequences are harsh for someone who knows what to do and chooses not to do it. (Deuteronomy 30:15-20, Joshua 24:20)

This begs the question: How do you ever learn the correct way of making proper choices?

The Bible is not a “road map” alone. It’s full of right and wrong choices made by humanity. Thusly, it’s God’s story of history where he deals with our human nature and helps us to bend our pathway to match his design. Else, we will run astray and get potentially weird and weirder.

I pause when I reach a bend in the trail or a junction in the path. Take time to look at the options and make a better choice. While it’s true, there are times I can bull through the china shop. There are also times I must slip through the maze of obstacles, much like a kitty cat.

There’s an old song I like to hum: I have a wonderful treasure, given from God without measure, we will travel together, My Bible and I.

The tools of my decisions are based upon the foundation of God’s word, prayer, and trusting God to see me through. Through the rough roads, I learned what happened and how to make better choices in the future. That’s my growth pattern! It makes future decision trees easier to write and more accessible to see the apparent pitfalls of certain choices I make.