A Higher Perspective ….and Turtles.

He was a big guy, this turtle. He was slowly making his way across a busy street by my bank. I glanced to my right and was disheartened. Even if he did manage to avoid the cars whizzing by, there was no way he would be able to climb up the tall curb to get to the field across the street– not with his stubby legs and heavy shell.

This made me sad. He was on a suicide mission. He didn’t realize it but I did because I had a higher perspective. I considered turning around to ‘save him’ but I hadn’t much success with my attempts to save these misguided creatures in the past.


About a year ago I picked up a turtle on a busy service road in an attempt to carry him to safety only to have him pee all over me! As the hot fluid hit my face I let him go to protect my eyes. He dropped to the ground and shattered. Epic Fail! At the beginning of this summer I tried to push a huge turtle with my foot across the road because I had learned my lesson about picking these guys up. As I was gently scooting him across the street with my foot, he managed to swing his head around and bite me on the shoe. Then he looked up and me and hissed. Undeterred, I sped the short distance home to get a shovel only to return to find him…shattered. NO, I do not have a good track record rescuing turtles.

Helpless, I said a little prayer. I asked God to let some workmen with heavy boots and a big shovel come along and help this little dude along his way. Praying about a turtle made me feel a little foolish but I would be traveling down this street again in five minutes to return to work and was not looking forward to seeing another casualty of vehicle versus turtle.

The turtle was heavy on my mind as I waited in line at the bank. Watching him trek across the road could be compared to watching people I love in my life make the wrong choices or decisions. We’ve all known someone who was traveling down the road to ruin. Unbeknownst to the turtle, I knew he would never be able to scale the curb no matter how hard he worked to cross the street. I had more information than he had. I could see the cars coming at him and the height of the curb he would have to scale. Sometimes in our life, we have more information that others have, either because we are older or have gone down that path before. As with the turtle, we can feel helpless to stop their journey.

I wonder if God ever feels helpless watching us go down the wrong road. He has a higher perspective than both the turtle and me. I get frustrated when things go wrong and stop me from the path I’m trying to take. I wonder if this is God working to change my course. I was trying to help both those turtles, but they saw me as a threat. In reality I was trying to save them. Perhaps I should take a closer look when things don’t go my way.

Oh, in closing, my ‘little prayer’ apparently was not too small for acknowledgment. As I drove back to work, traffic was stopped while two men in a West Memphis City Truck placed the turtle in a shovel, carried him slowly across the road and up over the big curb to place him gently in the field.