My GPS Has a First Name, But It’s Not O-S-C-A-R!
Years ago, I decided my GPS needed a name. After all, it was easier to yell at it for giving me wrong directions if it had a name. Am I right? Surely, I’m not the only one who gives my GPS a name!
I thought it would be cool if GPS was her initials. Yes, “her” because it was defaulted to the female voice and she sounded nice, so I left it. I was on a trip with my mom and sister when we were trying to come up with a name. I guess it’s a lot like naming a kid, because we would test out names in different scenarios. We were about to settle on Gretchen, but once the next name was suggested it was a no-brainer. We had been talking about a story from a previous trip where people were taking ginger for their motion sickness. At the time, we had never heard of ginger being used for that so we were casually discussing it. And then it hit me. Ginger! That’s what her name should be! We didn’t know anybody else with that name to get them confused, it fit the criteria, and there was meaning behind the name. That was over 10 years ago, and the name has stuck ever since!
Ginger and I have been on a lot of trips together, and we have covered a lot of miles. But recently, Ginger and I had a disagreement and now I have a hard time trusting her. I was in Washington state, and traveling from east of Seattle to the northwest corner of Washington. When I put in my destination, I was excited because it wasn’t going to take as long as I expected. An hour into the drive, Ginger tells me to take a road to the ferry entrance. The ferry?! No! No, no, NO! I don’t want to take the ferry. In fact, I can’t take the ferry because I don’t have a reservation. So, I turned around and drove the hour back to where I started, and put the destination in again.
Every route she tried to take me on would have made me get onto the ferry. (To my defense, when you map the destination, the GPS draws a line across the ferry path. And if you’ve never been there before, the line looks like there is actually a bridge there!) So, I drove south towards Tacoma to stay on land. I finally got to my destination, but it was a LONG night. What I thought was going to be a 3-hour drive, turned into six. Needless to say, I have a hard time trusting Ginger now, and I’ve started checking her work before heading out somewhere.
How often does that happen in life, where a friend, co-worker, or family member does one thing wrong and we decide we can’t trust them anymore? Trust. That’s a tough word. It’s so hard to trust someone after they have let you down. I know I’ve been there many times. But I think the hardest one for me is continuing to trust God even after He’s let me down. I walked away from God for a while because He let me down in a big way! But now that I’ve learned to trust Him no matter what, I trust He will pick the right route for me. Because even though the route seems longer or unfamiliar, I know the destination will always be correct!