A Whoopin' from God

I once heard a woman on the radio say that there was nothing like a whoopin' from God. Boy, howdy, ain't she right. As my hairdresser says, "He'll take you out to the woodshed." Today, after having failed (again) the daily "try to be more than just barely civil to jerk of a co-worker" test, I had to face an irritating drive home. Most of the drive was great, actually, but the last bit was more than my short-fused, impatient temper could handle. There was a stalled car at the intersection of the frontage road for 75-North and Lovers Lane. Happened to be in the turn lane. So happened I need to be in the turn lane and didn't know about the stalled car at first. I've just exited the freeway and am trying to cross over to the far right lane. There's a bit of a jam as the two right lanes merge into one, so we're all doing the we'll-take-turns-going-ahead-with-one-car-from-each-lane-going-forward-at-a-time bit, or at least, that's what we're supposed to be doing. One particularly malevolent driver in a white ford steadfastly refused to let anyone over, never mind the fact that these were not people who had tried to cut in line in any way. We had just exited the freeway, people. Anyhow, after going around white ford, I was left with just one lane to go, when driver of too-big-for-the-city white SUV and I came shoulder to shoulder. The cars in front of us merged. It was then my turn to pull ahead, but white SUV was having none of it. The other drivers in her lane weren't having any of it, either, so I had to fight my way into the lane behind her. Then JLR called my cell phone to tell me that there was a stalled vehicle in the right lane and that I should move over to go around it (and also to tell me that there was a big, beautiful rainbow just around the corner and I should be sure not to miss it). I quickly (and politely) maneuvered into the next lane and zoomed ahead. White SUV got stuck behind the stalled truck, and I had the opportunity to do the right thing, the Christian thing: show mercy and forgiveness and let the woman get over in front of me. I didn't do it. I was sorry almost immediately, of course, but then it was too late to do anything about it because of traffic flow. I was so eaten up with a combination of fury at her selfishness and disappointment in myself that I completely forgot to look for the rainbow.

Sorry to post such a long, boring post, but for those of you who've bothered to sit through this, there's a lesson. Do the right thing. There's no earthly reward for it (as we like to say, "No good deed goes unpunished"), and often, quite frankly, it hurts, but it's worth it. The feeling you get when you do the wrong thing, the feeling like you've disappointed the person whose opinion matters most to you, is not worth the satisfaction you get from getting your own way.

Do the right thing.