January 28, 2026
If I were asked to rate the change on a scale of one to five, I’d give it a zero. I travel through Potsdam at least a few times per week. A while back, New York State Department of Transportation (DOT) changed the traffic pattern on Route 11 in that village, reducing the number of traffic lanes and creating a center turn lane. A similar project was also done in Malone. The change makes my commute through that community a few minutes slower. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a patient person. It annoys me every time I get stuck at the same red light for more than one cycle and every time I see aggressive driving as people try to pass other cars and skip the line. I was complaining about the traffic pattern to my father, who retired from DOT, when it occurred to me that I didn’t know the intention of the project. In my years as a reporter for local secular newspapers, I remember writing about at least a couple of DOT projects intended to slow traffic. “If they intended to slow traffic, they knocked it out of the park,” I told my father. My father confirmed that slowing traffic to improve pedestrian safety was, in fact, the purpose of the change. “DOT has a marketing problem,” I told my father. “If they put up signage explaining in just a few words, ‘traffic pattern changed for pedestrian safety,’ or something like that, I think most reasonable people would think, ‘oh. Ok! It’s annoying, but no one wants to hurt or kill a person.’ Instead, I commonly hear people complain about traffic here.” It can be easier to accept a change if we understand the reason for it. That’s part of what makes faith so challenging. I don’t know why God does certain things/allows certain things to happen. I don’t know the plan. I don’t know what’s intended. It can be hard to make that leap from “I don’t know why this is happening” to “I trust God and his plan.” I know I often fall on my face a few times – usually plummeting into fear, anger, confusion, sadness… – before God helps me stick the landing on that leap. I continue to pray for the grace to accept God’s plan even when I don’t understand or like it. That’s a grace that would tip the scale. |
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