Roads
It's halfway through two weeks and we're driving on wet roads to our town.
"Remember when you used to drive this road everyday?" She asks.
I nod. I remember. I remember driving this road more than I remember much of life in these parts. This road has heard its share of my frustrations, these trees know my secrets well, the skyline and the mountains on the horizon know how hemmed in I felt. I did my most unproductive thinking on these roads.
I tell her that, while we drive. I tell her that it feels like whole chunk of life didn't happen for me, save for this road. Save for the journey I took every day.
We are talking about how easy it is to forget how difficult things are and have been. We are talking about how how quickly the todays we thought would never end have now slipped through, forgotten in some strange and healthy ways. God is good to us, to let us forget the hard and keep the good.
In the middle of those todays, though, how very difficult it is to remember that He gives new mercies and trades our mourning.
The ache of being hemmed in, feeling helpless, hopeless, visionless, there is nothing about this that is explicable. We experience it fully, because there is no other way to experience it but fully, deeply, intimately. Aware of how uniquely painful this situation is to us alone. No one understands because no one can understand. And they shouldn't.
It has been crafted for you.
I think about that a lot these days. I wonder why it is that I feel so home here in my heart, among these trees, these roads, these people who love me so wildly, deeply, and undeservedly, and yet it is in Texas, where I feel like a foreigner, a yankee, out of place, that God chose to teach me about my innermost crafting.
"Things have changed so quickly." She says.
I nod again. Six months ago our group of friends was in a vastly different place than we each are now. One year ago, when we dug our toes into smooth sand on an Adirondack beach, none of us could have known where we would be today. And I nearly guarantee that none of would have thought we'd be where we are.
And yet, where we each are is exactly where we ought to be. God was crafting us even then, that night, with those memories, and that pile of experiences. He was making us into what we are today. And today is building what we are tomorrow.
Even if I forget about this day a year from now (a sure bet that I'll forget about it in three weeks or five), God isn't wasting it. Not one moment of it.
He takes us on the right roads to take us to the right places at the right times.
