Worrying about the journey is a waste of time.

I am not the best version of myself in the passenger seat. It’s not that I don’t like driving, it’s just that I don’t like being in the front seat, where I most likely micro-manage the person that’s driving (I’m that girl). I clench the door handle when we slow down super close to the car in front of us, or if we are about to take a sharp turn. I hate that I do this, but I can’t help not being in control.

If you think about it, when we drive with someone, we are sort of trusting them with our lives. We trust them to slow down when they are supposed to, to take the right turns, to be alert, and most importantly, to get us where we need to be.

When you’re not driving, you’re not in control.

I was in the car the other day with my friends, and I realized that everytime I got nervous, absolutely nothing bad happened. I was always okay, without a scratch. And I know that this is not how it usually works out for everyone and accidents can happen, but every time I held my breath at a turn, I was always okay. Yet, I still worried.

In this fear, I realized that just like I don’t trust the driver of the car, I also don’t trust the driver of my life. God steers my life in crazy directions, making me squeeze my eyes tight and feel all queasy inside. I tell him to slow down, I worry about what’s around the corner, and he is just whipping me back and forth. I am a nervous wreck half the time.

But you know what? The driver always gets me to where I need to go.

And that’s a lot like God. Even if we don’t think we are going the right way, or maybe doing it too aggressively, or maybe a little too over the speed limit – his purpose is always fulfilled.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to know exactly when we would have our biggest life roadblocks? Like knowing when our biggest dreams will come into fruition, where we will live, who will stay in our lives, who we will marry, how many kids we will have, or even when all the bad stuff will happen? It sorta sucks not knowing when those roadblocks will hit. But God knows.

We don’t need to know everything about our journey.

Instead of freaking out about each turn, we can trust in the fact that the driver of our lives can be fully trusted. We can turn the music up, jam out in the front seat, maybe even get to know the driver instead of worrying so much about an accident.

Instead of freaking out about the journey, we can get closer to the one who is carrying us to our destination.

We don’t need to be anxious about where we are headed.

I also realized that I did not need to be freaking out, or even anxious about the drive. It makes me think of Matthew 6:25-30:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

We don’t have the steering wheel in life. You may know the direction you’re headed in, just like being in the driver seat. But you don’t know exactly how to get there, and you don’t need to.

We will never know what our future holds. But we can have confidence in the fact that God knows all the right directions, all the right turns, and left turns, and stop signs. He knows how to get me to exactly where I need to be – and I don’t. Let’s turn the music up, let’s laugh with the driver. After all, we are headed in the right direction, and we will end up exactly where we need to be.