Burning Bridges

I hate driving over bridges.  I don’t like to look down.  My imagination goes into overdrive and I see the car driving over the edge or the bridge collapsing.  I see scenes out of every action movie involving bridges.  The bottom falls out of the pit of my stomach.  I feel nauseous and my heart kicks up a beat of two.

Most people don’t know this about me.  I doubt even my husband does because I don’t mention it and I just ignore it and push it to the “irrational” portion of my brain.  This is an irrational fear.  If I let this fear overwhelm me, it would take over my life.  I wouldn’t cross bridges; I couldn’t travel; the scope of my involvement in the world would get narrower.

It’s really easy to fear the 0.00001% things that happen in life.  They are usually really horrific and traumatic events.  It does not make them any less real, or any less possible, but I refuse to live my life of the 0.00001% things that _might_ happen.  There is 99.9999% chance that good things will happen in my life.  Even if the 0.000001% happens, God’s grace will get us through it. 

We tend to look at the things that happen in our life as defining the now forever.  However, the world is full of stories on how people overcome being a random statistic.  They certainly don’t let that statistic rule their life.  I don’t think we should let minute statistics rule our life.  God has so much more in store for us.

As I write this, we are on the road for our move.  We have crossed at least eight major bridges so far.  My stomach still drops every time, but each time I pray that God wraps our car in safety and delivers us to our destination in one piece.  While my fear may be irrational, my prayer allows me to give it to God and not worry about becoming a 0.00001%.