Every morning now, I drive Abbey to her transitions program. It’s a 40-minute-long drive. We wind along the freeway past her favorite Costco, then a medical complex, next a row of furniture stores and a commercial zone, then a large hotel, and further down a shopping center with a Target. Along the way there is an In-n-Out, a mall, several gas stations, a Home Depot, and finally a Walmart just before we merge onto another freeway. I’ve always noticed these things, of course, as markers for my location, but I notice them all the more now that I have Abbey narrating to me about the things that she sees out her window as we drive along.

It’s not a quick trip, but I’m finding that it has a couple of beautiful rewards. The first is that each morning there is a point at which we can catch a brief glimpse of the Pacific Ocean, just before changing onto yet another freeway that leads us inland to Abbey’s school. It’s magnificent! Each morning the picture that I see before me is different. Some days the sky is thick with a marine layer of fog hanging low over the water, so that you cannot even see where the sky ends and where the ocean begins. Other days the sky is bright, clear, and sunny and the water is illuminated and sparkling and there’s a crisp blue line running distinctly along the horizon. And still on other days there are gray clouds, and the water is full of deep shades of dark blues and greens. This ever-changing sea scape is most days a cheerful greeting to my day and but at other times a heeling balm to sooth my aching heart and soul.

I wasn’t supposed to be driving my daughter to school this year. Transportation was supposed to be provided. Even now as I write, we are waiting for the contract to be secured, but as I’ve shared before so often in this life things just seem to turn upside down. If you’re a parent of a child with special needs, you know just what I mean. You plan a trip only for it to be canceled due to your child’s sudden medical needs. You trial a new medication hoping it will finally be the one to help, only to have it backfire and your child climbing the walls. You finally get a night out and away, only to be called home early due to your child’s behavioral breakdown. And on and on it goes. Things turning upside down without warning. It can be a very hard road to travel on, without a doubt.

One day recently as we were driving, a second beautiful reward for my upside-down situation suddenly became clear to me. In addition to Abbey’s informative narrating of our route, she often gets to pick out a movie to watch on the way to school. This particular morning, we were playing “Mary Poppins Returns” for likely the 125^th time, but who’s counting. When suddenly I heard something I’d never really paid attention to before. Mary Poppins was talking to her cousin about a predicament she was continually finding herself in when she said simply, “When the world turns upside down, its best to turn right along with it”. I paused for a second, then laughed, and then almost cried. How profound!

I had been driving now for months with my sweet girl and this morning routine had become quite precious to me. The narration from the backseat had become a wonderful conversation starter. The comments and questions had become a daily opportunity to enter into her world and to see how far she’d come. And the number of times the topic turned to something she felt about God and His goodness I couldn’t even count. What a blessing! Yes, this upside-down inconvenient situation had turned into such a blessing, when I had learned to turn right along with it.

The Bible speaks about an ability to turn along with things when your world turns upside down and what will come of it. In the book of James it says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” – James 1:2-4 NIV.

Mary Poppins offers some wise advice, but God offers us so much more here. He is not simply handing out wise advice to create a sunny disposition in others. God is promising, out of his great love for us, a very real assurance. That when we follow Him and trust the good that He can bring out of the trials of our life, we will be made stronger, more resilient, more mature and complete, lacking nothing. What a comfort to know that when life gets hard and our world turns upside down we can still see good come from it. We only need to trust and follow Him through the upside down turns and all.