Don’t Be a Backseat Driver

Hello there! I am so excited to be hanging out at Moms Without Answers today. I’m Ally and you can usually find me at You Are More Blog. I’ll be talking about faith and motherhood here on MWOA which I am super excited about. My hubby and I lead Children’s Ministry at a local church and have two babies of our own, Jase, who is two, and Elyse, who will be one at the end of this month. I absolutely love this community of ladies and am super excited about making some new friends!

 

 

Jase has become quite the backseat driver lately. I don’t know how a two year old can be so smart or have a better sense of direction than I do, but he does. I need my GPS to get just about anywhere, meanwhile my toddler is in the backseat yelling, “Grandma’s house that way!” “Playground over there!” “Mommy, chicken is that way!” “We going home now?” I honestly cannot believe his sense of direction. It’s not always a good thing though. I have purposely taken alternate routes to avoid passing the way we go to Grandma’s house so I didn’t have to deal with an all-out toddler melt down. Those things are awful when they happen in the car. Pass the ear plugs, please.

One time in particular, we were leaving the playground to head to my in-laws house. We were following my husband who decided to take the back way, which Jase was unfamiliar with. The entire way there he is talking in the back seat, “Mommy, no. Grandma’s house that way. This is not Grandma’s house. Mommy where are you going? Grandma’s house over there.” He had a destination in mind and the way we were going was not the way he wanted to go.

This got me thinking about my walk with Christ. I have said over and over in my life how I want the Lord’s guidance in what I do and where I go. I want Him to be leading me in the direction that He wants my life to go. It’s been no question to me that in my walk with Him, He needed to be in the driver’s seat. I fully trust that He has my life planned out and He is in control.

But, how many times am I like Jase and find myself sitting in the back seat telling God this isn’t the way to go or that I don’t want to go where He is taking me?

I think so many of us can say, sure we will let God take the driver’s seat in our lives. Of course we want God to lead every aspect of our lives. But how many of us are willing to also step out of the back seat and relinquish the control of knowing where we are going? That’s the hard part. It’s easy to say we want God to lead our lives, but it’s hard to step back and not tell Him how to do it.

When you aren’t behind the wheel of the car, you aren’t in control. A back seat driver might be a little bit of a control freak, if we are being honest here. The back seat driver is in the back telling you which way to go, navigating the driver because they have their own plan in mind. But you know what the back seat driver misses? They miss all the beauty that’s in the drive because they are too worried about telling the driver where to go.

My husband took the back road because it was the best route to take from where we were coming from. There were a lot more twists and turns, but he knew where he was going. He wouldn’t steer us the wrong way. Neither will our heavenly Father. God has the best plan, the best route, for our lives. He knows exactly where He wants to take us. It’s one thing to give Him the steering wheel, but it’s another thing to step out of the back seat driver position and trust that God knows where He is taking us.