Bill was waiting for his turn to race sixteen laps around the track when he turned to me to say: “I’d love to see you do a ride along.”

The inside of a race car was the last thing I wanted to see. Why pay to ride in a vehicle where the doors don’t open, when I can climb through the window of my Honda Odyssey for free? I reasoned.

Not wanting to hurt his feelings, I set my sarcasm aside for long enough to reply: “I’d rather watch you drive.”

“You can wait and do the ride along after I’m finished,” he urged.

“That’s okay, I’ll pass.”

Bill didn’t try to change my mind. Instead, a pregnant woman—who was also there to watch her husband race—helped change it for him when she said: “I wish I could do a ride along.”

She has a good reason for sitting on the sidelines, I said to myself. What is mine?

Circumstances allowed it. My spouse supported it. With no other excuses to fall back on, I had to admit that the only thing holding me back was my lack of desire to try something new.

Do you ever do that? Do you ever say ‘No’ because you don’t feel like saying ‘Yes’?

According to Andy Stanley, the problem with emotionally driven decision making is that it rarely leads us down the right path.[iii] “Direction is everything…”, Stanley insisted on page 33 of The Principle Of The Path. “This is why we cannot afford to live disconnected lives. When we discover those subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle discrepancies between intent and lifestyle, we should stop and pay attention. We should break the habit of drawing a circle around individual decisions and events and dismissing them as isolated occurrences.”

I was guilty of dismissing my decision not to do a ride along as I sat down on the bleachers near pit row to wait for Bill to finish his race. To pass the time, I opened Andy’s book to chapter seven and followed along as the author told a tale about his father, Charles Stanley: “My dad, like many dads, had a half dozen stories he repeated on a regular basis. When I was young, I often wondered if he knew he was repeating himself. Now I realize these stories represented the metanarrative of his life.”

Andy's words made me wonder: What story would I have to tell our daughters when we returned from Las Vegas? I wanted to tell them that their mom set aside her feelings of claustrophobia to squeeze into a race car. For this to happen, I had to stop making excuses for long enough to start leading by example.

“I’m going to do the ride along,” I said to Bill when his driving experience was over.

Ten minutes later, my husband was the spectator as two instructors helped me into a race car. I felt like a bobble head as I slid feet-first through the window and tried not to think about how restricted my movement was after they buckled me into the passenger seat. The effort proved worthwhile when, after three laps around the track, Bill grinned from ear to ear as his blonde Danica Patrick was extracted from the vehicle.

Andy Stanley was right. Legacies are made one decision at a time. I was standing at the crossroads of another one as I stared up at the rock wall and wondered if I could make it to the top.

“Are you going to climb?” Stephanie asked when she saw that I was considering it.

I nodded before reaching for a harness to slip it on. A few minutes later, I was ringing the bell at the top of what looked like the easiest path. This initial success prompted me to try two other routes. Finally, when my arms were so weak that I couldn’t reach for another crevice, I decided that I'd done enough. Katie had other plans as she unhooked herself from the most difficult route, handed the cable to me and said: “Your turn.”

“Why would you think that I could climb this one?” I asked.

“Because you’re my mom,” she said confidently. Katie was right. I was her mom. And if I expected my daughters to seize new opportunities in the future, I had to be willing to do the same right now.

We can make excuses or make a memory. I chose the latter as I climbed to the top of one more course, not to impress my daughters, but to impress upon them that  memories are worth the work as we show that direction determines destination; and not having a good reason, can be a great reason to try something new.

Quotes to Grow On

“Are there discrepancies between what you desire in your heart and what you are doing with your life?”

Andy Stanley, The Principle Of The Path, p. 31

“The direction you are currently traveling—relationally, financially, spiritually, and the list goes on and on—will determine where you end up in each of those respective arenas. … You current direction will determine your destination.”

Andy Stanley, The Principle Of The Path, p. 15