Parking Lines

 

When I go to cardiac rehab it is 5:45 am.  Well, that is if I am on time.  I park in the same parking lot all the time (so that I can find my car afterwards).  But since it is dark it is hard to see the faint lines to park straight.  I usually get out of the car and check the lines a couple of times.  After all, I am a rules-keeper.  Some might say that I am OCD.  But many drivers are not, and those drivers don’t park between the lines.  And it makes it difficult for those of us who do.  So, regardless of how the non-rule-followers park, I park in the lines.  But on this particular morning, my OCD caused me a little problem.  The big pickup on the one side and the SUV on the other side crowded me and I had to squeeze to get my car door open and wriggle out of my car.  But, I was squarely between the lines.  I felt rather smug with my clever parking job.  I could just see the pickup driver and SUV driver’s faces as they had to wriggle to get into their cars, which were not parked between the lines.  But when I got back to my car after cardiac rehab an hour later, the pickup and the SUV were just where I had left them.  And it was me that had to wriggle back into my neatly parked car.  When it was all over, the other drivers learned no lesson at all, and I was the one who wriggled in and out of the car door.  My take-away lesson: I can’t help anyone but myself. I Thessalonians 4:11, "And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you …”  My job is me and your job is you.  It is my responsibility to take care of myself, and it is your responsibility to take care of yourself.  So much for my OCD.