I'm sorry officer

"I'm sorry officer, I'm not waking up my baby just so you can see if it's real."

I push the limits on the road. For a month this summer I was working downtown. Traffic barely moved in the mornings into downtown and yet the HOV lane was coasting along just fine...
So I changed lanes, took a risk and drove in the HOV lane a couple of times a week.  Recently, I was talking to a friend about this and he said he used to do it every day. Then I said how I've noticed that some people put fake dolls in the passenger seat so it looks like they have a passenger in the HOV lane. Then we both thought "AHA a fake baby!" If we put a fake baby in a car seat and get pulled over, we can say "sorry officer, I'm not waking up my baby just so you can see if it's real."  We were totally joking about all of this, but the conversation came out of some real events.

I got 2 tickets this week. I believe God wanted me to WAKE UP.  At times in the bible, God calls peoples names twice to wake them up. For example "Samuel, Samuel."

So here's the deal of my wake up call. Last week and I had a ticket on the dash when I got back to my car. My friend and I had put money in the parking meter so I called the number on the ticket to find out what it was for. I was told that my car insurance had expired a couple days ago.  Thankfully the ticket was only for $50! I bought new car insurance right after that phone call.

A couple of days later, I was driving to another teacher's house. She texted me directions to her house since her address does not show up on a GPS. Before leaving my house, I tried the GPS anyways. It didn't work so I did my best to follow these directions that were texted to me. And then I heard sirens behind me. I didn't think the sirens were following me so I drove a few more meters and then I pulled over.
The officer said "I saw you on your phone". I said "Really officer, I wasn't texting, I'm just following these directions so that I can get to my friends house." 
After all was said and done, I was slammed with a $176 ticket for using a hand held device.

I was frustrated and then it got me thinking ... I have texted other times while driving. Maybe God is trying to wake me up. Since then I have found that more people every year are killed due to phones while driving even more than drinking.

Then I realized that God does things for our protection. He'd rather wake me up sooner than later. He seems to do that in every area of our lives. We go through trials and lessons and learn boundaries for our own good.
A lot of times, people don't like boundaries. We give children boundaries for playing outside so that they don't run into the road.
God gives boundaries to wait to have sex in marriage so that you are not left with a baby in an uncommitted relationship.  etc, etc.
I'm so thankful for a God who protects us and wakes us up for our own good. I encourage you to get to know this God that lived and died so that we could live most free and eternally protected.