My driving has changed. It needed to change. For the last six months, I have been laboring to increase the proper use of the turn signal. That I am pondering this for a blog is an indication that my mission for personal transportation directional notification perfection has not gotten much past a mild mediocre improvement.
I have been driving since I was seventeen. I can still remember taking the wheel on the way home after the test for a learning permit and three miles down the road getting pulled over by the Tennessee State Patrol for erratic driving. I didn’t get a ticket but an edification, he said with a smile, “Be careful, son.”
That’s fifty-nine years of driving experience. (I have to pause to regain my breath after seeing that number in print.) I have clear memories of Mom and Dad’s cars having the type of turn signaling, which required lowering the driver’s window and extending an arm.
Recently I have tried to improve my performance by researching a bit of the history of the apparatus. Of the hits I got on the subject, I selected one by Jim Motavalli. He is the other brother of my favorite radio show on PBS, “Car Talk.” It was hosted by “Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers.” Here’s the site to read the written article, https://www.cartalk.com/blogs/jim-motavalli/strange-true-history-turn-signal.
The picture accompanying this blog post is from that search. It is a prototype homemade by Oscar J. Simler and patented in 1929. You can visit the signaling cluster at the National Museum of American History. Not only did it signal turns, but it would also indicate when the vehicular was slowing and stopping.
The turn signal law in Tennessee is “2010 Tennessee Code Title 55- Motor and Other Vehicles Chapter 8 – Operation of Vehicles Rules of the Road 55-8-143 – Signals for turns.” The law contains 346 words that are probably read once by every fifteen-year-old and then forgotten after passing the required test.
There is a temptation to rehearse all the annoying misuse and neglected use of other drivers’ signaling their driving intentions. The problem is that I can’t think of a single flaw in other drivers that I don’t have myself.
Drew, our son, gave me an axiom correction I had never heard. The old axiom read, “Practice makes perfect.” Actually, the maxim should be “Practice makes permanent.” Right there is the source of my signaling problem; I have sixty years of flawed practice in using the turn signal. The flaw is extremely difficult to unlearn and replace by the proper signaling habits.
My struggle to master the use of the turn signal is indicative of every pursuit I have ever undertaken to become all God intended me to be. As my love for God increased, there came a corresponding aversion to those things in my life that pleases me or makes sense to me but disappoints or annoys God. I have learned that annoying God never ends well.
Here is my problem, my practicing of a flawed Christianity has made my Christianity functionally defective. Because I have an imperfect understanding of God and His ways, I have a personally modified practice of what I believe about God rather than what God has revealed of Himself. Over the years, I have set under flawed teaching of the Bible, or at best, I had flawed hearing resulting in beliefs that put me at odds with the expectations of my Creator. As a result, I end up believing what I practice rather than practicing what I believe.
I say, “Jesus Christ is Lord of my life.” But unfortunately, the shameful reality is that I reduced him to be more of my invisible “executive assistant.”
I don’t like this about how I live my life, but my life is what I have “practiced.” Here is where I encounter the wonder of the mercy, compassion, and grace of God. Slowly, those three workings of God in my life are bringing about the transformation He promised, and for which I long. That transformation is His promise and purpose and is my chosen desire.
Baldwin Heirlooms 