Waiting at the Railroad Crossing

Monday, I offered to pick up my grandson from school and take him home.  But on my way, traffic was backed-up.  I didn’t want to turn around and take the long way around the back-up, and traffic was still crawling, so I texted his dad and stayed in line.  The culprit was a train crossing ahead.  Then I noticed that the line was moving only because drivers were turning around.  It had been ten minutes.  I thought that the holdup would be resolved soon, but as I edged closer, I saw that a train was stopped at the crossing.  I texted Bennett’s dad again.  Eric said not to worry that Bennett was in after care.  Now I was frustrated at myself for waiting.  So I set a deadline in my head.  If the train didn’t move by then, I would turn around.  The time came, the train was still stopped, and I turned around retracing my route.  I had wasted forty minutes sitting and waiting!  I had to back-track, get onto the crowded interstate and drive the long way around.  When I got to the other side of the train intersection, it had taken sixteen minutes.  That meant that because of my stubbornness I had wasted twenty-four minutes while my grandson was waiting in aftercare!  Solomon said in Proverbs 11:2, “When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom.”  I texted Eric an hour late that I had just picked up his son.  Hey, why had I stubbornly stayed in that traffic line?  It was because I thought that I was right: the train would move at any moment.  But it didn’t and I was wrong.  But it took me forty minutes to admit that I had been wrong.  I thought, “Bennett, I’m sorry for being late.”  And then I thought, “Dear Lord, I’m sorry for being stubborn about other things in my life.”  Hey, what about you?  Do you have a stubborn streak?  If you do, root it out!  Don’t let pride get in your way of making good decisions.