It’s Dangerous In The Middle Lane. Get Out Now.

It’s easy to get lost and just as easy not to be.

It was past midnight. I was alone, completely lost. Having no idea where I was in a strange town and confused by the number of cars out that late at night, I was driving down the middle of the road.

Yes, I couldn’t even decide which lane I was supposed to be in. I was afraid, and that made it even worse.

Cars honked at me. “Move over,” people shouted, making me even more confused and scared.

I don’t remember how I made it back to the motel that my girlfriend and I were sharing on a “twenty-one-year’s old” trip to the Jersey Shore, but I clearly remember that feeling of being lost without help.

Many, many, years later, while living in Idaho and exploring some roads across a mountain, Del and I found ourselves at the end of the road — literally.

From then on, there was no actual road, just some tracks through the woods. With no phone service and not having seen any signs of human activity for many miles, we were lost.

This time, I had something I hadn’t had on that trip years before. First, I wasn’t alone. Second, we had a guidance system.

We had purchased one of the first GPS systems available back then, and we trusted that the little arrow was an accurate guide. A few hours later, we were back on the main road.

So, what does this have to do with life?

Every year since both those incidents, life has gotten more complicated.

People say, “Go here. Go There. Do this. Do that.”

And now they can say it all the time, in multiple ways.

Plus, there are belief systems that tell us who we are and news stories that tell us that the world as we know it is coming to an end.

It is so easy now to drive off the path and get lost — quickly.

Let’s stand back and look at all these ideas differently.

Instead of accepting it as “that’s the way it is,” let’s think of all the noise, confusion, and information as triggers to be even more aware than we ever have been.

All forecasts, from astrology to heredity, provide a copy of the script pertaining to who we are in the human story and our role in the larger story about the world during a specific time.

However, they are not, not, not, fate or a script we must follow.

Paying attention to weather forecasts, we take umbrellas and coats or stock up on food if needed.

Paying attention to story forecasts, we do the same.

However, it is smart and most certainly allowed—the true meaning of free will—to disagree with any claim about the world and ourselves that does not align itself with our highest understanding of the divine intelligence of Infinite Good.

While teaching Sunday school, I heard two stories that illustrate this point.

The first goes like this:

A young woman dreamed that a bear was chasing her through the forest. She ran and ran, and finally, finding a phone booth, she called for help. “What shall I do?” she asked. The reply was, “I don’t know. It’s your dream.”

It’s our dream. We decide.

The other story clears up the lost and alone.

In Sunday school, a little boy was asked if he would be afraid if he were lost in the middle of the sea with no one around. His answer was, “No.”

“Why not?” asked the teacher.

“Because if I am there, so is God.”

When I told the story of Del and I being lost in the Idaho Mountains, I mentioned I was not alone. I meant that in two ways.

That time, my trusted guide and companion was in the car with me, and that time, I knew that if I was there, so was God.

So yes, let forecasts of all kinds guide us into action.

Follow the guidance of people who will lead you to where you want to go or help you discover where you want to go.

With true guides and companions by our side and following the direction of the internal all-wise One, like a GPS system, our path will remain clean, clear, safe, promising, and fulfilling, no matter what happens in the surrounding story.

And there will be no driving down the middle of the road because we will know which lane to take.