My North Carolina Detour

[music] >> All right, so I'm sitting here on the side of the highway and I'm thinking about something that just happened to me. I was driving from Atlanta, Georgia to Lakewood, New Jersey. 14 hours, three kids, which already is not a drive, it's more like a survival mission. There's snacks everywhere. Someone's crying. Someone [music] needs to stop every 12 minutes and you finally get everyone quiet and then someone says, "Okay, I have to go to the bathroom now." So, I'm driving along. >> [music] >> I've got my GPS on and I am locked in. I don't play games with the GPS. I'm not one of those guys that tries to outsmart the GPS. I don't go, "Okay, I have a better way. I know a way. Let me figure out, you know, on my own." I'm a GPS junkie. If the GPS says jump, I say how high. So, I'm looking at that ETA about every 15 seconds. When all of a sudden, it reroutes and it adds another 25 minutes. 25 minutes. Now, if your a drive is an hour, it's not such a big deal, but when you're on an hour nine of a 14-hour drive with kids, 25 minutes is a very big deal. I'm like, "Are you serious right now?" Okay, fine, but I'm going to stay loyal, so I follow it. It starts taking me off the highway into these random country roads somewhere deep in the middle of North Carolina. And I'm thinking this makes no sense. [music] Like, where am I going? Did GPS just give up on life? But a few minutes in, I start [clears throat] seeing those flashing electronic signs everywhere. [music] "Major accident ahead. Avoid the highway." I'm like, "Okay." Then I glance back at the highway on the on the map on the GPS and I see miles and miles of just [music] red, completely backed up. Some must massive pileup must have happened and it hits me. That annoying 25-minute [music] delay just saved me at least four hours. And I'm sitting there thinking, "This is literally life." Because we all have those moments. You have something important at work, a meeting, an opportunity, [music] and that morning your kid wakes up sick. You're like, "Seriously? Today of all days, you decided to be sick." You thought you'd be married at 23 23 years old, like all your friends. And suddenly life throws something at you, a health issue, some sort of challenge, and now you're 25 and you're still waiting. You thought by 26 for sure you'd have three kids already. And now you're 27 and you're still waiting. You're not married. All your friends have good jobs and already bought their dream home and you can't find anything. And you go home to your two-bedroom apartment that reeks like gefilte fish and it hurts. It's frustrating. It feels like your life gets rerouted for no reason at all. But what if it's the exact same [music] thing? What if that 25-minute delay in your life is saving you hours [music] and days and years of something you cannot see? What if Hashem is pulling you off a highway that up ahead has a crash you know nothing about? And you're sitting there like, "Why in the world is this happening to me?" And Hashem is like, "You have no clue what I just saved you from." We all hate detours. We hate delays. We hate when life doesn't go according to [music] our timeline. But maybe the whole point is to trust the one running the GPS because [music] he sees the traffic, he sees the crashes, he sees the road ahead and we do [music] not. So yeah, yesterday I was annoyed about 25 minutes, but today I am grateful [music] because sometimes the most frustrating reroutes are actually [music] the greatest acts of kindness. You might feel like your life is a country road in North Carolina, but remember, heaven is saving you from traffic you have no idea about. >> [music]