Following Too Closely

And other habits that could cost you your life

We recently bought a new car, and it is not new, but it’s new for us. The untimely death of our Chevy Traverse in a snowy Walmart parking lot in northern Minnesota made us reluctant car buyers in a terrible used car market, but the shining upside is that we now own a car that a dealership recently cleaned, so it is immaculate and smells like promise. The most magical part of this 2019 Atlas might be its name (the writer swoons), but coming in at a close second is the adaptive cruise control.

Maybe you have experienced this feature already, but I had not. So when I zipped down the freeway last weekend, I set the cruise to a moderate speed (a fact noted for my eldest children who have decided to subscribe to this newsletter, welcome and thank you) and proceeded to turn up my music to unwise decibels, as this is my happy driving place. All was fine until the Atlas advanced upon a slower car in the left lane. Just as my instincts were kicking in to brake and slow down, the car automatically decelerated like magic.

I freaked out. For four frantic seconds I glanced at every dial on the dashboard and button on the steering wheel, trying to figure out what happened. Then I noticed the car accelerating again and realized how it sensed every vehicle it approached and adjusted its speed. 

But here is where the automatic cruise control shifted to revelatory. Because I realized, for the first time since driver’s ed, that I have been following too closely.

Despite my winter sermons to the budding drivers in the passenger seat about Safe Stopping Distances and how to count seconds between cars to make sure you have time and space to slow down, the adaptive (amazing) cruise control chagrined me into seeing that my instincts weren’t sharp enough. The car always slows down before my hovering foot presses the brake. It always goes slower than I would go, too, leaving lots more room between vehicles.

I realized I’ve been following too closely, too fast, for too long. Each time I click on the cruise now, I remember the jarring, gentle tug backwards. 

You must slow down. In time. Always.

//

I’ve been following too closely...what? Nearly everything. The news. Politicians. Strangers on social media. Acquaintances I envy. Successful people’s careers. Professional drama. Petty gossip. My own silly stats.

Lent brings the jarring-but-gentle tug to slow down. We need a longer stopping distance and a slower speed, and we always needed them, but now is the time to remember. God’s arm reaches out firm with love, like that instant when a driver simultaneously brakes and braces the passenger with a flung-out arm to prevent any impact, the instinct to protect and preserve.

Return to me with your whole heart.

The metaphor stalls out here, of course, because Lent is not cruise control or automatic pilot. It requires us to buckle up, to do something, many things¹, anything because the call to repentance is loud as a trumpet and we better listen to the blaring. Lives depend on it: ours and others.

It matters who we’re following. How closely and how long.

// 

In the midst of finishing this essay, I learned about the active shooter at Michigan State University. 

My gut twisted, sinking with familiar dread (because our bodies have a Mass Shooting Response). My fingers flew over to Facebook where my aunt had already posted that my cousin was safe in her dorm (because our instincts have a Social Media Response). 

Right now I keep the “Live Updates: Multiple Shots Fired” tab open; I click back and forth to refresh as I finish paragraphs here. A journalist posted a screenshot of the text alert sent out to students at 10:05 p.m. tonight: “Run, Hide, Fight.” (Because our universities have an Active Shooter Response.)

Whatever we follow changes us, shapes us, determines the pace of our living. Why we have collectively decided to accept such violence as collateral damage for living in this country in the year of Our Lord two thousand and twenty-three, I will go to my grave not understanding. But we have chosen to follow a thousand idols that are killing us, figuratively and literally. I want to pull the car of this country over to the side of the road like a parent who’s hit her last nerve and yell EVERYONE OUT. We have to figure out where we’re going and what we’re doing before we get back in and go a single mile more.

But I have to do the same for the car of my own soul, to cross-examine everything that needs to slow down and stay safe, to move at a pace that will let me and others live.

//

You know the phenomenon of suddenly snapping-to while driving and realizing you can’t recall the last 5, 10, 20 miles? It’s called highway hypnosis. No surprise, it can be deadly. Auto safety experts caution you to notice the signs, watch what you eat and drink, roll down the windows for fresh air, and turn up the radio. 

Letting ourselves be lulled by the road we’re on could cost us everything.

Lent wakes us up, too. Pulls us over to the shoulder while the world goes whizzing by and points a finger straight at the truth. We don’t have to live like this, we don’t, and the prophets will plead with us again and again to wake up, to repent, to turn away and turn back.

Even now, Joel says—the first words we hear on Ash Wednesday², and they catch in my throat every year like ashes—even and especially now, we cannot follow what does not give life. We cannot choose violence or despair or power or privilege. We have to lay it down and take up another yoke. Here come 40 days to remember ourselves back into the way of the One who came to open our eyes and keep them open. The table-flipper and truth-teller who knew every awful and maddening part of our humanity and chose us anyway.

I decided to close the live updates tab. There is no news now, only illusions churned by the cycle of consumption, and honestly the only helpful thing I can do from 700 miles away is to pray anyway. 

Lent starts like this every year: looking down at the ashes we’ve made, looking up and begging for help, looking around and asking what we can do to shine light and hope into a world hungry for something better to follow. 

Let our heads snap to attention, O God of mercy and justice. Keep our eyes open wide and our hearts open wider. If nothing else, for the next 40 days, let us be careful how we follow. Slow us down, O Wisdom from On High, slow us way down until we reach a pace where we can breathe again, all of us.

1. The “many things” here would be defined as prayer, fasting, and almsgiving: the three traditional Lenten practices. But you’re welcome to add anything more that you’d like; Matthew 25:35-36 has a great list I’ve never completed to date.

2. Joel 2:12-18. Always the first reading for Ash Wednesday Mass. I have never gotten over these words or what they unlock inside of my knotted heart each year.

p.s. If you listened to the audio version and enjoyed this option, would you let me know? (I recorded it in the Atlas during a February rain, strange upon strange in MN, but hopefully the audio is decent.) Wondering whether to keep going with this podcast-ish version…