Out Of Control

No. 50 - 03rd September 2017

There’s a video on YouTube at the moment where an American racing driver disguises himself as a bit of a Hillbilly, and then drifts into a car sales room. He looks fascinated by a really powerful car. The salesman of course can’t resist the opportunity and tries to sell it to him. The racing driver backs off a bit saying a car like that would be far too powerful for him. But the salesman keeps up the pressure and finally persuades him to take it out for a test drive. Well, after a couple of bumpy starts the racing driver takes off like a bat out of hell. The salesman who is sitting in the passenger seat pleads with him to slow down and pull over. But the racing driver just gets more and more wild in the way he’s driving. “You’ll be liable for any damage to this vehicle” the terrified salesman screams. I’m afraid to say it had my wife and me absolutely shaking with laughter.

It’s funny, but if that salesman had only known who was driving his car, I’m sure he’d still have been nervous but not shaking with fear the way he was. It’s that awful feeling that things have gone very badly wrong and you have absolutely no control over the situation. That’s the frightening bit. Well, living with a disease such as my wife’s MS is a bit like that. There’s no cure for it. It just gets gradually worse and worse. It’s the sort of thing where you wake up in the middle of the night and start to wonder what will happen if I die before her. How would she cope? Who will look after her? It’s something that’s completely out of my control and rather scary.

I was praying around these sort of things the other day and asking God how I should be leading this family. I turned to the Bible as I usually do in these situations and landed on a passage which says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and don’t’ rely on your own understanding of what’s going on. Whatever you’re doing, be aware that God is there, watching and caring, and He will steer you through it. It’s like the racing driver: When you actually know who’s in the driving seat, it takes a lot of the fear out of it. Life doesn’t become a joyride, but I know I’m in a safe pair of hands. I know I can trust him with my life.