HIGH RATES OF SPEED

Two weeks ago, I said I was going high speed. Internet that is. As I sit here writing this, I am still not high speed. No, it’s not because I didn’t make arrangements for it. It’s simply because I am still waiting to be hooked up.

I remember specifically asking the provider what types of problems I could expect with high speed internet. None, they answered. Apparently, they forgot the biggest problem, getting someone out to my house to ACTUALLY hook me up!!

Well, that is supposedly taken care of, as I am scheduled for Monday, between 3:00 pm and 5:00 pm, to be “connected at a very high rate of speed”. We’ll see.

High rates of speed. Now that I can identify with. Let me just say this as simply as possible. I like to go fast, really, really fast. Driving, that is. The faster the better, that’s my motto. Two summers ago was my worst infraction of the law, when I drove thirty miles in about seventeen minutes. That’s roughly one hundred miles an hour, on an empty freeway, in a car that could have gone so much faster. So, you could rebuke me for breaking the law, or……………………you could praise me for my remarkable show of self-restraint. It’s your choice.

I see many cars going that speed sometimes, but usually, they slow down after about a minute. I drive a car that can go one hundred miles an hour, literally for hours at a time. Most cars can’t do that. Lest you think I am just some lawbreaker, you need to understand how free I feel when I am flying along at high speeds. I praise and thank God for those times, even though I know I am “speeding”. Is this wrong?

In a strictly “legal” sense, yes, it is. But there is this whole other sense that tells me to praise God for the amazing things He has allowed us to discover is a good thing. And when I am going fast, I can do nothing but praise God. Oh yeah, and laugh.

I dream of taking a rocket to the moon. I watch films of rockets taking off, and I wish I was on it, feeling like my insides were about to come out of my back. Or, to fly a one man rocket in one day to the moon, now that would be cool.

For now, the car will have to do. It takes curves like it is part of the road, and on the straightway, well, I have buried the needle at one hundred twenty miles an hour, and kept going, so we just don’t know how fast it can go……………..yet.

Someday, I will grow up, and stop getting cheap thrills from driving a little faster than the road will allow. Let’s hope that day comes before my daughter starts learning how to drive, because she, like her father before her, likes to go fast, too.

I never drive like that on a busy road. But, there is the road that I live on, full of sharp curves winding through a forest that is somehow just too much a temptation to pass up. Yeah, maybe one day I will wrap my car around a tree, and lose life, but I’ll meet God that day laughing. I am not going to worry about crashing, because just as in life, crashes occur even when you are being extra careful, even when you don’t have a choice in the matter.

I say, live!!! If danger, or pain is going to get in the way, then run it over. God would not have us sitting into a chair, trembling as if the chair was going to disappear the moment we tried to sit. He would not have us approach the next step as if it could be our last. He would have us approach that step as if it is our first, with all the gusto of a ten month old baby walking for the first time. Babies don’t care if they might fall. They just take the step. I don’t care if I crash, and that isn’t selfishness. It’s part of who I am, and I will not live life in fear of what “might” happen. God has given me the joy of going fast, and fast I will go, all the while respecting the safety of others.