Greetings in the name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. How is everyone doing? I pray that this blog finds everyone in good health and spirits. Things have been going kinda rough out here. My student has not been following highway signs. He will end up in the wrong lane, taking wrong exits, missing exits, and taking wrong turns. I held him back from moving on in his training (pretty much failing him) and gave him lots of lectures. I even let him make the mistakes hoping that he will see that he must follow the signs. None of it worked. He just kept making excuses and telling me that he can pay attention to the signs. Well, this morning he continued to miss every exit and even changed lanes into an exit only lane when we are not supposed to exit. A couple of times he made last minute emergency lane changes to avoid exiting the highway. I was done. I took the steps needed to turn him over to safety for evaluation. After we got to our destination I told him the mistakes he made because he wasn't paying attention to signs. Again, he made excuses. I told him that he has been doing this for over a week now. I then told him that I will be taking him to the terminal and safety will evaluate him and determine where he goes from here. Then he started blaming me. He asked how many students have I turned back to safety. I told him that in the 8 years I have been training, he is the only one. He then drew the race card. He said that is probably because he is black. It is a good thing that I am well prepared for people who use the race card. I told him that it is interesting that he thinks that I can train truck drivers for 8 years and that he would be my first black student. It is also interesting that he thinks that I could work in the safety office and never have a black truck driver come into the office. I have found that people who pull the race card usually don't think before they speak. They act on emotion. I gave him a good speech about what he just insinuated and then told him that what he just said tells me that my training him is over with because he thinks I am racist and therefor he will never listen to me. But then I felt a little tug. Actually, it was a push. I was being pushed into giving him a test. A test to let him prove he can follow signs. The push was by the Holy Spirit. But why? Why would the Holy Spirit want me to even consider giving this student a second chance? I know he has not been following signs. I had my student pick up the map and route us to our drop yard in Kansas City, MO. I had him write down the route. I told him that I will give him one more chance to prove he can follow signs. He routed himself and he will do all the driving. I will not say a word. If he failed then there is no excuse we will head to Omaha, NE. He agreed and was excited. He double checked his route, triple checked. It was a real simple route. I-29 South, I-435 West, exit 54 and go east on Parvin Rd, then South on Kentucky. He gets going and all is going good so far. He makes it to I-435 without any problems. He then comes up on exit 54 and the exit sign says that the first road is 48th street and the second road is Parvin road. He comes up on the first road and stops. A sign in front of him says "No trucks east on 48th street." He turns on his blinker to turn east ... then makes the turn. I think to myself 'he actually missed that sign and is going to mess up.' He then comes to a red light and across the road there is a sign that says "No trucks." The light turned green and he continued east on 48th street. I waited until he got to the sign and I told him to stop. I pointed the sign to him. He tried to tell me that he saw the sign and was about to stop. I then had him turn around and we went to the other sign. We pulled over and I pointed it to him. He was silent. I then got us someplace safe to park and I reminded him of our agreement earlier. I told him that he has no excuse for missing the first sign and he should not have waited til we got up to the sign to stop. I believe he didn't even see the second sign and would have gone on past the sign. He didn't say a word and I actually saw his eyes water. I knew that he finally saw that he was missing the signs. I then had him continue taking us to the drop yard. Once at the yard I felt another push by the Holy Spirit. I saw that the Holy Spirit helped me get through to my student. He knew that my student was going to mess up real bad and knew that it would open my students eyes. The problem before was that my students eyes were not open to see his mistake. Now that my student's eyes were open, he now may learn and pay attention. Now the Holy Spirit was asking me to continue training the student. So I lectured to the student some more making sure that he saw what I have been getting onto him all this time. That he wasn't paying attention to signs and that it was something he had to be aware of and that he had to start paying attention. I can't teach someone how to pay attention. He also had to realize that I have been doing this for a long time. I am not knew at training and I have a very good record when it comes to students leaving my truck. Then I asked him if he wants to learn to drive professionally. He said yes. I told him he has to listen. He said he will. I let him know that I will continue to train him.
When we are given a gift we do have to remember who is ultimately in charge. I was ready to give up on this student. Especially when he played the race card. That is something people have to think about. If you play the race card, it will not always give you the results you want. Someone like me looks at it as you are not going to cooperate anyway cause you think I am racist. But in this case, my boss (God) told me not to give up on the student. God knew that if I give him a test where the student was going to make all the calls, the student would mess up and see that he has no one else to blame. Especially when I went back and showed him the signs he passed. God does know what best to do. God knows everything that will happen and if we follow Him then everything will work out. I am so glad that I followed the Holy Spirit because down deep inside. I never want to turn a student into safety.
Take care and God Bless.
Love,
The Oklahoma Tomcat
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