I had 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 toward the front of the line were giving up and 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, so 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.
