“Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.”
Ecclesiastes 9:11 ESV
We decided against the campus tour when we realized we’d most likely not make it in time.
It was the day after the unexpected, the unavoidable interruption of our day.
The journey and itinerary was wrought with unexpectedness, hurry, and hassle.
We were traveling for a special tradition, beyond excited in a nervous way, an unease that I thought was because of the getting to all the places on time, staying in step with regimented flow.
My son attends a military college. He is a Senior (thank you, Lord) and there would be the ring on his finger by the end of the day. Campus overwhelmed with scurrying excited and prideful parents for Parents Weekend.
We’d wear our fancy dresses, his sister and I, his escorts. He would wear full dress uniform. Two events in one day, we were on track it was gonna be stressful I told my husband, neither of us known for our “go with the flow”.
Pretty day and cool blue skies, we travel the back roads before the busy interstate, a well known path, an oft taken road.
I noticed in my approach, it seemed the driver was considering whether to go. The old sedan eased forward and rested and then, it seems the driver just decided to go.
I screamed, I believe. My foot found the brake and I made my car turn to try and get away, safely away and it pounded to a halt, stopped suddenly in the softness of a deep ditch. The front, the side, the tires splattered black and mangled. I sat and I cried, a scary moan of a cry.
I was afraid and because I couldn’t define just why, decide it’s the fear of missing my son’s big day and I cry and I can’t stop crying.
It seems an irrational thing but I feel irrational, I feel unable to define my fear over the intersection of possible loss of life and life.
My daughter on the same path but a different route finds us with her husband and they help us and it’s a discombobulated mess; but, we make it on through.
We are problem solvers, we make it work.
That’s how we roll!
We make the ceremony. We wear the fancy dresses, he gives us roses and we are good. We are fine.
We fill up the coastal weekend with other, good fancy breakfast, the ambience of dinner and the beach and the dog and shells, big unbroken shells we find.
Home now, I ask the question I asked before.
Why was she stopping, was she easing forward just to see for sure, or did she look once and not again and then, too late, her car crashes into my side?
Why was she tentative or was she distracted or was it as she told us, she never saw me at all?
I ask myself how and why and I’m curious how to measure a split second because it seems that could have made all the difference.
Whether she’d have waited
or continued on.
I hear the words to a song that remind me there’s no reason I shouldn’t now continue on.
It is entirely up to us whether we notice our chances and take them. It’s personal, after all, the believing we can or not believing at all. No one might ever know, whether we believe and take chances, whether we decide still to go, to try, to not simply say no.
Carry on calmly, LT.
There are more things to see, more places to be.
There are chances not to miss the way you have have missed them before, focus flitting towards future and making your every day present a blur.
Slow, steady now. You don’t have to be strong to be able. You don’t have to be wealthy to be willing.
Time and chance, pausing or going forward faithfully, these are encounters, opportunities and interchanges that will happen for us all.
Pace yourself, now.
Continue, carry on easily more aware.
Chance and time are in God’s hands.
Our hope endures.
Our hope endures the worst of conditions.
Lisa Anne Tindal 