The first thing you need to know is that I am scared to death of driving… or I used to be.

Weird, right? A grown woman who has never once had an car accident or even a traffic ticket, who passed her driver’s test the first time, is scared to drive? Well, I am a grown woman, but I moved to New York City as soon as I graduated from college, and you don’t need to know how to drive in New York City. You need to know how to walk to the curb and stick your arm in the air to hail a cab, and/or how to use the subway system. And it’s true I’ve never been in an accident or even gotten a ticket, but then again, I drive so infrequently that I’ve always chalked both those facts up to sheer statistical luck. And I did pass my driver’s test the first time, but that is only because I refused to take it at all until I was 22 years old. And again, there’s that luck thing.

You see, I’ve always believed that I’m a lucky person. And, as you may know, our beliefs are pretty much running the show. Our beliefs (the ones we know about and the ones we don’t) draw us into complicated situations, lead us to form relationships with some really interesting people — basically manifest whatever we believe right into our lives, so that we can experience what we think, and reinforce it… or choose to change it.

I chose to change my fear of driving. I did this for the reason we all decide to change things: because it finally became harder to hold onto the fear than it would be to live without it. Long story short, I decided it would be a good idea for me to drive my car (which I’d always thought of as my husband’s car, seeing as I never drove it) from our nice safe home in Brooklyn to my new office in Manhattan, parallel park on a busy street, work a few hours, drive two hours upstate in Friday afternoon rush hour traffic, then the next day drive back home and park in an extremely tight and overcrowded public parking garage.

Anyone who knows me could tell you that that sounded like a truly terrible idea.

I would never have attempted it if I didn’t have a close relationship with Source, All That Is, God… whatever you want to call it. I also have a nifty way of changing beliefs called ThetaHealing. So I prepped myself for my first solo NYC drive by Theta-changing some beliefs… little things like “I am a terrible driver,” “I have no sense of direction,” “I will seriously injure someone if I attempt to drive,” fun stuff like that. Still, I felt pretty shaky. Would Source come through for me on this one? Sure, I trusted the Creator of All That Is to handle my emotional life, my relationship with my husband and children, and heal my clients — but could I trust God with me behind the wheel in New York rush hour traffic?

I was so scared that I literally was praying (with my eyes open!) the entire trip in to Manhattan. I made a wrong turn due to some construction and got horribly lost, even with my GPS. But I did not panic or even curse. God was right there; I could feel it. It actually seemed pretty funny, getting lost.

When I finally arrived at my new office, my wonderful colleague Sarah was standing in a parking space right by the office, guarding it so no one else could take it. When I started to pull into the space — the part of the journey I was most nervous about, seeing as the last time I had successfully parallel parked was the day I took my driver’s test over 20 years before — the car right in front of me pulled out, so that all I had to do was go slightly to the right and drive forward a few feet and I was perfectly parallel parked. Yes!

Later, the rush hour traffic was even worse than I’d imagined, but I kept my cool in an hour or two of bumper-to-bumper traffic. I had the best company possible, an unlimited channel of unconditional love and joy. I just hung out and drove… it was, to my amazement, easy. I didn’t expect easy!

My GPS, I realized later, was mysteriously set to avoid all major highways, so it kept giving me the worst directions possible to go upstate. But I stayed tuned in to Source, at times taking the scenic route the GPS was leading me on, at other times trusting my own instincts and going a different way (“Recalculating!” my GPS kept squawking).

I wasn’t surprised at all when, the next day, at the end of my journey, I searched all the floors of the parking garage for a space, circling further and further down into the garage, and I could practically hear Source saying, “It’s okay. Just keep going. The perfect space is waiting for you.”

Finally I saw a space. It seemed a little tight for my big car, but… “Is this it?” I asked God. “You could do that if you wanted,” came the response. “I have something better though.”

I drove on. And found a nice corner space, with no cement columns lurking nearby and enough room to center my car between the others just right. I parked my car effortlessly. By that time, I didn’t feel scared at all. I felt powerful, in the flow, free. Kind of like a person who just conquered a lifelong fear. And proved to herself yet again that the Creator of All That Is is always there for us… even in rush hour traffic.

— Tara Greenway