Middle of the Road

The memory is so vivid that is seems like yesterday. I was given a somewhat new red, Ford Ranger. Like most teenagers at this moment, they think they rule the world (or should I say the ‘rule the road’). It was perfect for the person I was: a mediocre country boy with the liking to dress up every once in a while. It could be rugged so I could take it through a muddy field or I could clean it up to shine under a Friday moon. I loved it. I was blessed enough to have my step-father pay for it at the dealership and I would pay him back as I made a little money (and hopefully I will pay him back the full amount one day).
Unfortunately, there was a drawback to this wonderful moment. The truck was a five-speed and I had absolutely no clue how to drive such a machine. It didn’t seem too complicated but I had to learn because it was now ‘my truck.’ So, being the wonderful mother she is, she offered to teach me how to drive the truck. I hopped into the driver side and she into the passenger side. I am not sure to this day but I think she had nerve pills slipped into her purse for emergency purposes. She guided me through the steps: holding in the clutch in order to start the truck, always having it out of gear when I started it, and pulling the emergency brake before I took it down the road. Once it was started she explained the concept of the clutch and gas and how I must slowly release the clutch and slowly press down the gas; this is the most difficult aspect of driving a five-speed for the first time, no matter who you are. If you have experienced driving a clutch and you didn’t cut the engine off because you released the clutch too quickly, then I commend you, but I doubt there is such a person. Long story short, I learned how to drive my truck within hours and I still have it to this day.
But I’m not writing an instruction manual on ‘how to drive a stick-shift’ but rather set up a story that each one of us were or are or going to be apart of. It is truly human to face this problem. If you have not met this situation then I hope I enlighten you in some way to cope or handle the situation when you stumble upon it. I know without a doubt that each person has or is stumbling on the subject I am about to present: Our Life and God.
It seems like a funny thing to say sometimes but I tended to stray from the most important Person in my life: God. And there are many reasons why I do so. You can ask yourself the question, “why do I not serve God with all my strength?;” and you might find many humiliating answers…I do. Like every human on earth, I focused my attention on the most important person I know: ME. The #1, I, not you but ME, the self, and you can name myriads of answers to show how much we love ourselves. Don’t get me wrong, we should love ourselves and be confident in our bodies but I tended to be in love with myself, only persuing what I wanted and not what God wanted. I am not preaching to you at all, because I was that person and too often, I feel like I slip back into him.
I will give an example of what I am speaking about. Yesterday, I was on my way to Nashville to meet a friend when I noticed a hitchhiker on the side of the road before my exit to get on the interstate. And what did I do? Kept driving. I saw his thumb pointing towards the sky and his arm lifted, his bag, his worn clothes, but I kept driving. It seemed like I ran into an invisible wall that he was holding up with his arm. As soon as I hit his wall my mood quickly altered to guilt and sorrow. I was not being the Christian Jesus has taught me to be. And you know what my reason was why I didn’t give him a lift? Because I was afraid I would have been late for my appointment. Not because I was afraid of him killing me (as many think about when picking up a stranger) and not because I didn’t want to talk to someone. I was simply thinking about myself and my appointment.
In this country, we drive on the right side of the road, but often I find myself in the left lane dodging oncoming cars or sliding out of conrol in the rocks that border the road itself. (This is figurative writing, so don’t think I literally am a bad driver.)
In my junior year of high school, I was out of control. Not many people know of this past of mine. Like the world historically had its Dark Ages, well, this year of my life was my Dark Age. I literally fell off the precipice of Life and not many people knew or know.
I had a good friend that was the motivation for my actions, not the cause. I believe it was my own fault for the acts I did and it was my choice to either be apart of the option or be the alternative. I chose to do them in effect to be “one with the crowd.”
Imagine this: You are looking at a silver, shiny ball on the ground. So bright you can’t help but notice it. You approach the ball and notice the light reflecting off of its side into your eye. Every movement you make around the ball creates the light to bounce off of that particular side into your eye, but no matter the point you stand at, there will always be a side to the ball that retains darkness. The sun’s light can not reflect over the entire ball. This ball is me during my Dark Age. The people around me saw the light, which was the good, honest, and polite Michael, not knowing there was somebody else on the other side.
My darkness involved drugs, alcohol, deception, foul language, and the sinuous list could fill up the rest of this book. I was at the point where I would drink beer every Saturday night with my friends, not socially, but enough that it was probably in my system until the next weekend. Many days before school, I would leave earlier than usual to smoke a joint before the long day. But marijuana wasn’t the drug that I think governed my life, it was cocaine.
I was around a few friends one afternoon after school, and one of them pulled out this bag that resembled flour. My brain hesitated for a second and then I realized what the substance was. Cocaine. I had never seen it before in my life except on television when a cop would bust some crackhead walking down the street. But there it was before my eyes. My conscience was already telling me, “don’t do it!” I had done marijuana previously and plenty of times but I knew that this drug was something harder and it ruined many people’s lives. As my friend chopped up the drug and seperated it in perfect lines on a mirror, I knew I wasn’t going to snort one. I just couldn’t. I was afraid of what it would do to me, my life, my future. So as everybody quickly inhaled their share into their lungs, it was passed to me. I told them, “not today, I don’t feel like it.” That was my way of acting macho enough to brush it off so I didn’t have to snort my portion. A friend scolded me, “Ah! Your afraid of it, aren’t you? It isn’t any worse than that stuff you smoke all the time!” But I quickly told him no again and pushed the mirror from my face hoping he would pull it away and snort the line himself. He continued to aggitate me about the situation and quickly breathed in the cocaine himself. But that wasn’t it. He said to me next, “if you aren’t going to do a line, then lick the bag that it was in and see if you like it.” Figuring that it was less potent than the drug, I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed the bag and shoved it into my mouth to roll it around my toungue. It was very bitter, like nothing I had ever tasted before. They all laughed and pointed while watching me chew on the bag like it was my last dinner before I was going to the electric chair. It made my mouth numb to the taste as well as any feeling in my mouth. This was my first experience with the drug and certainly not my last.
I started to get braver and was doing lines with a straw rather than chewing on the paper it came in. I even had my own personal straw. It wasn’t actually a straw, it was the cover to a pen. We would gut the pen of its ink and conceal the “straw” in our back pockets for convenient use. I could not even begin to count how many times I did cocaine but it was very few, especially compared to those who did it at the time. Why do I consider it the drug that ruled my life, even though it wasn’t a daily routine? Because of the effects and affects it continues to have on my life to this day. I haven’t touched the drug since that year and if I think about the substance for more than a second, my mouth begins to water. This is a sign of addiction and I know that it could rule my life if I allowed it.
Today, I have a greater Ruler in my life, Christ. He is my Savior that has opened another road for me to travel so that I don’t have be apart of my Dark Age. As Robert Frost writes in his poem, The Road Not Taken:
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could…
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim…
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back…
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
Frost writes of himself traveling down a path and he comes to a fork. He hesitates about which one he should travel but he decides on his second choice never knowing if it is “as just as fair”…but he belives it is the “better claim.” His conclusion speaks to my soul. He took the path “less traveled,” but this choice has “made all the difference.” He never knew where the other road would have taken him in life but he, like myself, believes, from the present life we are surrounded by, that it was the correct selection.
Even though I may veer to the left or to the right in life, I must remember to allow God to steer my soul, heart, and life; I should not use my own strength and steer where I see my future. He will keep me on the right side and guide my life in places I thought I would have never been; For example, lending a ride for a hitchhiker or possibly helping a kid with his drug addiction. I never captured my life as one who would struggle with drugs, with love, with hope, with fear, with happiness. Through Christ I have been given another chance at this life, and the sins that I believed never could have been washed away…well, they are.