In our December 3rd post, I mentioned that my 5-year journal helps me track God’s faithfulness in our lives over time. A big, recent demonstration of God’s grace has been my relearning to drive over the past year. (Thank you so much to everyone who has persevered with me in the process, and continues to accommodate our status as a one-car family!)

After commemorating this major transformation Wednesday morning, later that afternoon my skills in both driving and trusting God were significantly tested. As I’ve written previously, due to the brain injury, I’m totally reliant on my GPS to navigate. I’m specifically dependent the audio function because, with my visuospatial deficits, it’s not safe for me to glance from the road to the screen to check for upcoming directions.

But Wednesday, just as I got on the freeway, the audio on my GPS cut off (although my phone continued navigating). All I could think to do at 65 + mph was to exhort Siri, “Turn audio back on!” To which Siri calmly replied, “Your phone is not on mute. There is nothing playing.” This was obviously untrue, but after repeating our exchange several times within a two-minute period, I decided I was going to have to either remember how to get home on my own, start checking the phone screen for directions, or both.

As I’m writing this post, I’ve identified a third solution, which I’m sure many of you have also noticed: I should have pulled over to see what was wrong with the phone. However, part of my residual TBI deficits can prevent me from thinking clearly when I’m upset. Therefore, this most obvious solution did not occur to me at the time. And this is also why I’m so grateful that God enabled me not to panic while I was on the freeway.

Given this bizarre turn of events, it took me significantly longer to get home: 20 minutes turned into 45, and I ended up on a couple of freeways that I definitely should not have. But I was also surprised by how much of the general geography of San Jose I’ve absorbed by osmosis in the last year. And I believe the fact that I remained peaceful until I reached home was God’s supernatural intervention.

When I did get inside and examine my phone, I discovered the audio had cut off because it had switched into night mode/do not disturb. I’ve set my phone to do this from 10 pm – 6 am on weekdays, but there’s not a good objective explanation for why it would switch to this mode on its own around 12:30 pm on a sunny day.

What I can say objectively is that we’ve committed to give God thanks and praise every day until Christmas, and by his grace even this scary incident has transformed into a wonderful reminder of how the Lord is always with me and, when needed, can empower me to do things that usually lie outside my abilities.

See you tomorrow!