Stick to Your Lane

Trains have a tendency of switching tracks where by two trains can possibly collide if one doesn’t switch. The mechanism enables two different trains to use one and the same track in some instances.

In athletics, this is not possible. Every man or woman is in their own lane with a common finish line. Unlike athletics — and like athletics at the same time — life is a race for each one of us. Though we run by each other, we do not have a common finish line.

I see our finish lines as invisible: only showing up when a person has thrown in the towel, whether they believe they have achieved their life’s calling or not. So the longer one’s spirit can endure, the farther their finish line will be. And unlike athletics, where the less time taken defines victory — in life, the longer you run, the more things you are likely to achieve; in most cases.

Back to the tracks; the error of many is to switch their lanes, or persuade others to change lanes. I will give an example; When one friend of mine got married, at about 33, after much ‘apressure’, he suddenly began throwing dark humor my way surrounding marriage.

He and another could say things like,

You would understand, only if you were married

This is for marrieds only

I pray you get a girl friend — you look so lonely

You should marry by this year, you’re growing old…

Unbeknownst to them, I’d see myself being dragged into their lane in the imagery of the athletic track. I was only in my mid-20s, and I wasn’t (still I’m not) ready for marriage.

I resisted their influence, but it would take a toll on me sometimes. I’d start thinking I’m behind in life, yet I was exactly where God wanted me to be. The people we compare ourselves to were born earlier than us and experienced a different life from us.

Just like we start talking or walking at different ages, we cannot possibly claim everyone must marry by 25!

The books of our lives as Psalm 139 states are not necessarily similar. You must know where you must be at what age by your dwelling with God. Otherwise you’ll go with what the world suggests.

Do not trust your own personal vision as well! Inquire of the Lord like David did often. How many have said by such and such a time they’d be somewhere; and that time comes and they are nowhere near that goal. The stress and shame felt is sometimes something they cannot recover from.

Regardless, God doesn’t support receiving things late in life, but I think He’d rather you mature enough — proven and tested — to have the thing you are praying for.

I’m grateful the Lord has made known to me where I must be when. And so to ascertain or to help me achieve that, prayer takes the steering wheel. So that I do not miss the times of life God has had ordained.

Now it must be God, and it must be aligned to purpose, for even the devil talked through Peter when he thought he’d do something that would do Jesus a favor, but was against Jesus’ destiny in hind sight.

We experience this around church spaces as well, and know that someone could be influenced the same. One time, there was this reckless rampage at my church after a word of knowledge was passed about early marriages.

An excited woman came my way and screamed, “I see you married next year!”

“No thanks!” I rebounded the ‘prophecy.’

She sneered at the audacity that I had! It’s been two years since the time she prophesied. Nothing has happened. But I am not shaken either, because the Lord’s time hasn’t come.

Being in church doesn’t necessarily mean whatever is spoken is true. You must not disqualify God as your primary instructor and prophet; and you must not let others convince you otherwise. Let these others be confirmers of what He said to you first.

Otherwise, going with the flow might get you ending up in a lane that’s not yours to run. Life will be smooth for the person who owns that lane. But it’ll be bumpy for you. The waters that make them float might make you drown. The fires that refine and purify them could make you melt into something totally different — making you lose your form and identity.

I have as well talked about time zones. That as we exist on this same planet, someone in China could be entering a new day, you’d be experiencing 9pm of the previous day and the American could be still at 2pm — yet we all have our feet on the same globe in the same year. Unlike athletics, once you switch lanes, you change a time zone too.

You might admire a man who is worth a billion US dollars, and wish to be them, but you do not know that they’ve had years of cultivation, learning, failing, learning again, saving, investing, which you might know nothing about. If given his shoes, you might squander all that cash, for you would have skipped two decades of his life time, to get there! Heck, you’d be non American, meaning you never had the background that shaped him or you missed the moment that made him pursue wealth — or the idea that made wealth come to him.

The conclusion of the matter is; yes make friends, celebrate one another, but don’t envy to be them! Admire and be inspired, yes. But stick to your race. Perhaps they studied at Oxford for example; and you look down on yourself because you have never been or might never even get there! But what if you were never meant to go to Oxford! What if in that book of yours God never wrote about you studying abroad but locally so that when He glorifies Himself in you, no one claims that you were backed up by such exquisite education!

Be wise! And know that your life is custom and tailor made with strands and threads of uniqueness. Do not wish to be someone else and don’t make men wish they were you! For if you were someone else, who’ll be you? If they are you, who’ll be them?

If we tread paths of others, we create a multiverse. Lovers of Marvel fiction know this concept; where by one does one thing that makes them abandon their originally designed path of life, creating one that didn’t; causing a myriad of unprecedented events both to those around them and the universe itself. We’ve seen this in life; some events are so hard to undo — staying only as consequences, haunting many and making them regret for the rest of their lives.

Prevention is better than cure the English proverb says . . . and so I pray for you, as I pray for me; that God like unto Mary, may show Himself unto us more and more, with the news of our purposes; making us value our individuality and what He has trusted with us so much, that it drowns out the notion of ever thinking that others are greater than us!

For I’ve also learnt by God, that greatness should not be defined by our comparison to others, but by our comparison to ourselves as individuals with God: that if we don’t achieve what God has told us to do like Jonah initially — then we can kiss greatness good bye.