If you’ve talked to me for five minutes since I’ve been on Okinawa, you’ve heard me complain about driving here. We live on the south central part of the island, and it seems that most events we attend, including the middle school and the UMUC campus where I taught this fall are all a thirty to sixty minute drive north, despite the fact that we are only driving TEN miles. I shouldn’t complain—drivers are slow and courteous, but I hate spending so much time in my van.

This fall I started tutoring at the middle school where my older kids attend. I work every other day, and while my daughter scoffed at the idea of riding with me to and from her school (The horror! The horror!), my son—thirteen and in eighth grade—embraced the chance to get off the bus a couple days a week. So two to three days a week, we’ve driven the thirty to sixty minutes to and from school together. Sometimes we are quiet, sometimes we laugh (mostly he laughs at me), and sometimes we sort out problems. It has been good.

Earlier this week, I was on my usual rant about I wish we lived closer to your school blah blah whine whine. When I stopped to take a breath,  my son looked me square in the eye and said,

“But then we wouldn’t be able to drive together and laugh and stuff.”

All the air drained from my lungs.

“You are right. I would miss this,” I squeaked, fighting tears.

We rode the last few minutes in silence, but that conversation has buoyed me through several drives this week and kept my grumbling in check. Perspective seems to wait in my every complaint.

It is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose. Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life. Philippians 2:13-16