Recalculating GPS

Last year I had to take a trip into Tiffin Ohio. I wear glasses to read, which is a problem when trying to drive and read directions. I cannot see distances with the glasses on so I stretched out my arm trying to read and watch the road at the same time. It was a huge problem on this trip because I ended up lost in corn fields. Miles and miles of corn fields with no one to ask for directions. I kept looking at the directions trying to figure out where I went wrong, what turn I was supposed to take and getting really anxious. I needed to be at an important meeting on time but getting there was becoming to look more and more impossible until I decided to take a road I had not been on, ending up at a small restaurant where I received the directions to get me back on the right road.

Since I travel a lot plus end up getting lost no matter where I go, my daughter gave me a GPS for Christmas last year. We played with the voices ending up picking Daniel with a British voice. Hearing his accent pronounce streets in Florida is hilarious but Daniel never allows me to become totally lost like that trip into Ohio. The GPS goes with me on planes and traveling around in Florida providing me with the confidence I need to get to where I am supposed to be.

Daniel watches over the road I'm on from a satellite, giving me instructions ahead of time, showing me every turn on the road ahead plus an arrow to tell me where they next turn will be. Whenever I mess up, Daniel tells me he is recalculating so that I get on the right road again. No matter how badly I mess up, he always gets me to where I'm going.

Our lives are much like my driving. We may know where we are supposed to end up but taking the best way there is often met with our will, ego and inability to read the signs. We get lost. When we have no clue what God's Plan is, that makes it even harder. We may have some indication of what we were intended for, but life's challenges get in the way as well. Bad advice can have us taking a totally wrong turn. The interference of others can cause detours but God somehow manages to get us back on the right road if we listen to His directions.

God's Plan Succeeds when we follow His lead but we cannot hear His voice. We forget He's watching over us much like Daniel's screen would be totally blank if I did not charge the battery. While Daniel still knows how to get me where I'm going, it does me no good if I allow the battery to die. It is the same way with God. If we allow what connects us to God, our faith, to run dry, it is as if it was not there at all. We're totally lost, alone and confused.

With some luck we may end up with directions from someone but we can never really be sure they are putting us on the right road or not. How could we be when we are no longer sure of where we are supposed to go?

When we are living out our days, we are traveling on a path that will affect our future. Each day we take what came before and we use the knowledge of successes and failures hoping we learn from both. Sometimes our past includes traumatic events and sometimes those events end up getting us on the wrong path, causing us to stop dead in our tracks or totally turning us around so that we never really get to where we are supposed to go.

Civilians will experience at least one traumatic event in their lives. The death of someone they love is always traumatic but especially traumatic when it is from an accident, fire, natural disaster or crime. Some of us will be involved with traumatic events in our own lives or we may witness them. These events leave all of us changed.

Some of us enter into law enforcement or emergency services like the fire department. They will experience more trauma than the average citizen as they fulfill their duties. They are changed with each one.

Some of us enter into the military and in times of war, the traumatic experiences occur more often than most individuals are prepared to recover from easily. When the person is a compassionate individual, those events end up cutting into them. Some end up with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, an anxiety disorder, caused by events and not by the person. PTSD can only come after trauma. The word "trauma" is Greek for "wound" leaving this a very telling term to use. It literally means "after trauma" fully explaining why people change after events out of their control.

This is where a GPS would come in very handy. There would be a calm voice while we are afraid telling us where to go for help. That the wrong choices we made in our lives were due to detours others put before us and there was a way to no longer be lost because we were being watched over. We were not traveling on this road by ourselves and had someone showing us the way.

We actually have all we need to recover but most of us have let that connection die. Everything we need to heal in within us and around us but it takes plugging into the sources and recharging the power.

We need to connect to the knowledge of what PTSD is accumulated over the last 30 years. We need to connect to the faith that we had so that we can heal the wound within our minds and reclaim our hope.

It is all there. We have a GPS showing the way to healing so that we can get back to where we are supposed to go.

Hero After War

Posted to Great Americans by NamGuardianAngel on September 10, 2009

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What can happen when you heal is that you help others heal by watching over them and making them feel sure they are not alone.