My Right

    I wasn't late - yet. I was on time, just later than I usually was. The digital clock on my car dashboard was relentlessly changing, one minute at a time. But I finally reached the four-lane road and sighed in relief. Not long now.
    I sped up to 40 miles an hour, passing Arbys, the mattress store with the large clearance sale, the strip mall with its tiny stores. I caught up with the cars in front of me at the light where the four-lane divided highway crossed my road. Two more times, the digital clock changed on my dashboard. I would only just make it in time to get my computer set up before work.
    The light finally changed; green. I eased off the brake a moment, and crept closer and closer to the car in front of me. It didn't move. Didn't move. I braked again. It waited; it moved. Finally. I barely kept myself from tailgating as it moved forward, inches at a time. My digital 8 changed to a 9 just waiting for it to go on a green light. I sighed again as it started. Now, I was headed to work.
   In the fast lane. Bear this in mind, I was in the fast lane, with a speed limit of 35 miles an hour. The car in the slow lane was going 35. The car in front of me? It was mimicking the one to my right. It was going 35.
    I bit back my impatience. The phrase "speak evil of no one; show perfect courtesy to all people" from Titus came to mind. I prayed in response. God, I was being outwardly nice because I like to be taken for a good, kind person. Change my heart? It doesn't at all resemble what I'd like it to be. I prayed the car going 35 in the fast lane wouldn't turn when I needed to turn. It didn't - and I got to work, turned my computer on, and just got all fourteen programs up and running before the clock hit 8:30. But…
    I had been impatient because a car was going 35 miles an hour. Granted, it was being driven in the fast lane, but it was going 35 miles an hour on a road where the government (my national authority) had degreed the limit of speed would be 35 miles an hour. There was an unwritten rule all over the city that 5 miles over that limit was safe, even expected, especially in the fast lanes in the city. Because of that unwritten rule, I had taken exception with a driver who obeyed the rules posted every few hundred feet, the one who had actually respected authority.
   I had thought I had every right to be upset because those five miles an hour of speed were not granted to me. I had taken it to be my right to go 40 miles an hour on a road with a 35 miles an hour speed limit, and on being denied that speed, had to pray for help to calm myself because I could not do it on my own. I thought about it more, and realized that my mindset towards many things in life have the same demanding expectation of things that are not really rights.
    A good day. Respect from every person I meet. Time to myself. Time for fun, time for doing what I want, at least a little. Time to write, to read, to move. Time to walk, occasionally. Family members who love me. Things I've never been guaranteed, things that are not mine by right, only things given to me on a regular basis that I come to demand. Things that upset me when they disappear.
   Things I'm never grateful for.
   Things that have always been gifts.
   Things that I'll someday be grateful for, in Heaven, when I'll truly see each item as a gift.