Relax

Last week I drove down to Houston for the annual Ordinariate Priest's Convocation. This is where we all meet with our Bishop for continuing education, and to carry out administrative duties for the Ordinariate. On my way down there I ran into an awful traffic jam. It seems that a semi truck lost its trailer and it fell from an overpass to the road of interstate 610 below. Traffic was snarled in every direction and it took me close to an hour to get about five miles. Yuck.

While trying very hard to wait patiently for us to move forward, I was able to watch how other people handled it. Remember now, most of these people probably were not "foreigners" like me; they likely lived there in Houston and so were used to this kind of traffic. The scene reminded me of that old movie "Dante's Peak" where the people are evacuating during a volcanic explosion. They are banging their cars into each other, driving on the median, and trying to traverse large rivers with stationwagons.

It may not have been that bad, but it was fairly close. I could see the look on their faces, and their driving was clearly exhibiting a near-total meltdown. A few cars did cross over the median for an offramp, and others were weaving in and out of traffic like they were trying to escape a tornado.

I felt quite sorry for them as I sat there and thought, "God will get me through this in the right time, and if I am late to the Convocation, I will apologize to my Bishop and hope he understands." How do you deal with it when things do not go right? When a "wrench" is thrown in the works of your life, do you "freak out" and try to do every possible thing to prevent it? Or, maybe, do you ask the Lord to help you deal with it in the peace that He gives? Do you sit back and rest in the fact that "traffic jams" cannot remove Christ from His throne?

Annoyances in life are not there to harm us, but if we believe that we need to have everything our way, then we will believe that every annoyance is the "end of the world". I am certain that the day's stress level for many of those people was off the charts. We can let the situation control us, and believe that we have to control it; or, we can settle back and relax in the grace of Christ and say "this too will pass."