Directionally Challenged

I am going to North Carolina this weekend for a conference. Woot-woot! My friend Sarah is kind of enough to leave me the key to her house so I can save a few hundred bucks on a hotel room, which is AWESOME. But it means that I'll be finding my way between her house in Charlotte and the Embassy Suites late at night and early in the morning. And it means I'll have to find my way to the Starbucks in the dark.
Which makes me so grateful for Googlemaps. I have a neat stack of papers now with explicit directions to get me from point A to B to C to D and the odds of me getting lost drop from 72% to a mere 3%--even Googlemaps gets confused every once in a while.
I love being able to look down the list and know I've got seventeen miles, or only two blocks before I have to turn or exit. Whereas with one of those newfangled GPS things, I'd have to wait for the snooty lady to tell me when my turn was approaching. And what about when she's wrong and tells you to turn left into a cement wall? Or she doesn't want to let you stop for a coffee and yells "U-turn, U-turn" while you're trying to tell some poor barista you want a tall light-roast?
Yes. I have control issues.
And on occasion those bleed into my relationship with God. Sometimes I think it would be fabulous if God would give me a Googlemap instead of turn-by-turn directions. I want to know where we're going specifically, how many miles it is, and how long it will be. But instead, he says, "In half a mile, turn right."
Hmph.
But when I set aside my control issues, or at least peer over the top of them, I don't really want that. I mean, I have a hard enough time living in the moment as it is. How many really cool views would I miss if I were so fixated on the end? The not knowing makes life a beautiful adventure instead of a trek.
And what if the map led over Mount Saint Helen? Looking at it from here in Little Rock, I'd be sorely tempted to give up and sprawl on my dirty floor for the next eighty years. But instead, if there is a mountain in my path, God will use the journey between here and the base to prepare me, strengthen me, and provide what I'll need to climb the summit. And boy, what a view I'd have missed.
Or, what if my journey ended in like two miles? I think I'd rather not know...
So, while I'm incredibly glad for the stack of complete directions I have leading to and from the Charlotte airport, I'm grateful that God maps our lives GPS-style. And I'm glad God's voice doesn't sound like an uppity woman.