If life was a driving test, I'd need to retake it.

I got this.
Uhhh. Nope. I definitely don’t got this.

I thought the car was in gear. It most definitely was not.
I made this snap realization as my car quickly rolled toward…and over the curb. The front of the car was now firmly resting on the elevated concrete.

I pulled the hand brake...restarted the stalled engine and tried to reverse off the curb.
No luck.  

At this point I hoped that nobody was looking out their window to find out what the scraping sound of metal versus concrete was outside.

I tried again.
Ugh. Stall.

Then I caught a glimpse in the rear view window of a car pulling up and stopping. I was about to wave the driver around me, until I noticed he was getting out of his car. Oh great. My heart sank. I don’t want help, I thought. I want to figure this out by myself.

As I handed the older gentleman my keys, he kindly smiled and remarked that he’d help get the car off the curb. My immediate thought jumped out of my mouth in audible words, “There must be somewhere else you need to be.”
“I’m just late in getting home, that’s all,” he replied.

It was a simple exchange.
Yet, in hindsight it revealed so much about my heart.

I often assume people have better things to do than lend me a hand. I assume there is somewhere, anywhere, else that people would rather be, than be with me.

I was a bit devastated by this realization. I’m a grown up for goodness sake, we aren’t supposed to get hung up on these sorts of things, are we? And even more so, because I know that if anyone were to ever come to me for help or simply to hang out I’d be glad to do so. Yet, when it’s me on the receiving end, it’s not quite so easy.

Why did it take this moment of a stranger’s generosity for me to see clearly into my heart? Well, for one thing, my guard was down. I did actually need help. I had little choice but to accept it in this moment. Secondly, I’ve recently been learning how to drive this manual car. It doesn’t sound like such a big deal. But while learning to change gears I’ve been learning I need to change my perspective in certain areas of my life.

"while learning to change gears,
I’ve been learning I need to change my perspective
in certain areas of my life."

I’ve learned that I can’t be afraid to try new things. In this case, I was generously offered the car from a friend. But it’s manual drive. If I wanted the car, I needed to learn. It was a good thing to be forced into this later-in-life lesson. If I’d waited to learn it on my own terms it likely wouldn’t have happened.

There are many things I haven’t done, because I’ve been afraid of the outcome, or worried that it might be a mistake, or scary or dangerous. Yet, being gently forced into something like learning to drive a manual car – as funny as it sounds – has reminded me that I’d rather regret doing something rather than never doing it at all.

I even learned that no matter how many times I tried to reverse that car off the curb I wasn’t going to make it. There really was no turning back. In the end, the gentleman had to pop the car up over the curb and drive it forward back onto the road.