September 13, 2025
Exactly a year ago I gave up driving. Here is how it happened.
Tim and I had been living in Sequim, Washington for three years. The town is so convenient, we joked that everything we need is within a five-mile radius. On the 13th of September I drove to another town to have lunch with a friend. I did not feel safe driving on Highway 101. It is a two lane road with heavy, fast traffic. I didn’t feel confident that I could make the 10,000 decisions needed every moment. I was 75 years old.
After the drive home I told Tim that I didn’t think I should drive outside of the five-mile radius anymore. He agreed. He said he would be delighted to take me anywhere I couldn’t get on my trike. (The Trike is another story, coming soon.)
That night I had two vivid dreams. I did not know what the first one meant until after the second one. In the first dream I was standing in the middle of Highway 101. A short distance in front of me were two men on opposite sides of the center line of the highway. A big pick-up truck—the kind with sets of dual rear wheels. The truck hit both of the men on the road, mangling them all around those tires! I recognized the driver of the pickup as my former mother-in-law, Anne of blessed memory. I realized that the two men she killed with her car were her own sons, my former brothers-in-law.
I panicked awake, heart pounding. “What was that?!” I exclaimed to the Lord. I lay awake for some time.
When I went back to sleep, I had the second dream.
I was standing outside the driver’s side of my car, an old Subaru outback.
(By the way, the best car I have ever had!) My granddaughter Faith, at about age three, was sitting in the driver’s seat. As I closed the car door, I told her, “Don’t start the engine.” I turned to walk away and she started the engine! I turned back to the car, opened the door and scolded her.
“I told you not to start the engine!” I said, “Now I am going to have to spank you.”
She did not protest. She held her arms up to me so that I could take her out of the car to discipline her. Then I woke up.
Again, shaking, I cried out to the Lord, “What did that mean?”
Immediately I knew that the Lord was telling me not to drive anymore, to not even start the engine! Then I heard him say, “If you continue to drive you will kill somebody’s children.”
We are all somebody’s children. I had seen a picture of my mother-in-law killing her own children with her vehicle.
In tremendous thankfulness I obeyed. “Yes, Lord,” I said. I will not drive a car again.”
P.S.
My mother, of blessed memory, was my example. One day when she was just a bit older than I am now, she called me from where she had gone to do some errands in Bellingham, about 20 miles from where we lived. She said she was not going to drive anymore. Tim and I drove together to bring her, and her car home.
She had been preparing to make a right hand turn from a stop sign. Just as she started to turn she saw someone stepping out to cross the road. She stopped, frightened, parked the car and never drove again. That had been a big change for all of us. No longer would she run errands for us, but everywhere she needed to go she would need a ride. She did not complain, or apologize. If she wanted to go out to lunch she would call one of her friends and ask her if she would like to go for a “drive-by”.
“You, drive,” she would tell her friend, “I’ll buy.