I’ll never forget that blazing August afternoon: I was looking for a place to park in the Richway strip mall, Roswell, Georgia. I sported about in my flawlessly detailed 1974 Ford Galaxy XL, V-8, metallic cocoa brown, wire wheels, beautiful rolled and pleated ivory leather interior, and a fancy-looking brown Landau top.
Out of nowhere, a man peering through the center of his steering wheel, barely able to see over the dash, rocketing in a demolition derby car, not watching where he was going, t-boned me . . . and totaled my magnificent vessel.
I sat stunned for a moment and prayed I was having a nightmare. The hissing steam from underneath the crumpled hood suggested otherwise. When my Dad arrived and discovered no one was injured, he turned quickly to me and said, “You know Fords may LOOK pretty but they’re sissies.”
Animated, which was his style, he moved from one story to the next, and the next, describing cars he had owned over the years that, to say the least, weren’t “tough” enough. I laughed so much I struggled to breathe. We were still chuckling when the tow truck arrived. I know the driver wondered about us—and kept one eye on us as he began to pull my car onto the truck bed.
Dad grew up in hard-time Tennessee but garnered a bountiful harvest of wisdom and humor from the seasons of his struggles. We never forget those years of ‘bumper crops’. But Dad never wallowed in the whines of a victim. That was not at all his style. He never thought, “Why did all these bad things happen to me,” or “I would have been further along by now if it hadn’t been for . . . ,” He interpreted life as, “We GET to see the good things that are there in the middle of the bad—if we just look for them.”
He taught me how to think that way. And, in so doing saved my life. Maybe others as well. Today, I can tell you that there is always, ALWAYS something good to be discovered (or created) if we will only adjust our attitude and keep moving forward (positive).
Our Creator fashioned us in His image and lavishes us with the ability to think and speak good thoughts, which can bring into existence wonderful new vistas in the middle of the wackiest chaos. Think about that for a moment! We aren’t God, but we ARE able to do more than we may think—because we were made in His image.
We can conjure good thoughts, share kindness and words that lift others, destroy depressing situations with laughter, capture bad thoughts that make us anxious, and place them in prison, or be gentle when others are hurting—with our uniqueness—if we choose to.
In the Sesame Street movie, Follow That Bird, that debuted in August, 1985, Waylon Jennings sings an up-beat ditty that supports what I'm saying in a few well-wrought lyrics:
I found out a long time ago,
You gotta learn to “Yes” when life says ‘No.’
Don’t dwell on the bad times once they’re past,
That kind of thinkin’ gets you nowhere fast.
There Ain’t No Road Too Long concludes with a zinger—
Some of the wisest thoughts ever spoken—or sung. Adults should hear it, but it's hidden in an old children's movie. So simple, yet so hard to do sometimes:
Don't look back; don't you turn around!
Just keep your eye on where you're bound!
And for me?
That kind of thinkin' along the way to my final destination has made this brief momentary affliction pass so much more sweetly on what might have been an otherwise anxious, sad, and lonesome highway.
© Copyright July, 2019, Gary Landerfelt. MyPericope.com
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