The day starts like any other. Your eyes greet the rising sun. This day feels different. The crisp air of the upcoming fall. Steam rises from your coffee as you sit listening to the sounds of life. A hummingbird dances in the air, it’s wings beating faster than the wind. The small moments, the moments that bring a touch of peace in this crazy world
You tell the kids we can’t just stay indoors, let’s go for a ride. This pandemic has halted normal activities and normal life. You get a fancy coffee you have heard about and you start driving. Your daughter fires up her music playlist, the road lays out before you. You get lost in the simplicity of the moment. Realizing how you took a ride so many years ago with these same to kids. They were smaller then, more fragile in some ways. I was trying to forge a path from a family of four to a family of three. Now they are much older, those scars of that time in our life scabbed over but not forgotten. Forging a life for us for the last 17+ years.
You drive the curves of the parkway. The bend in the road, ears popping as you climbed higher. Amazed at the mountains that rise up all around. The temperature dropping the higher you climb, your worries lessen. The sun dancing through the leaves that make the archways above the traffic. Windows down and the wind blowing, blowing away the cobwebs that dance around catching anxious thoughts, weighing you down. You see the mountains rolling one into the next. A sea of rolling hills and peaks with deep valleys Trees shaded in the deepest greens waiting for God’s paintbrush to bring fall to life. You feel the humidity evaporate with each turn you take and the higher you drive. Feeling a sense of freedom as you wait to drive around the next bend, make it through the tunnel just like we go in and out of the tunnels of life. You drive and the trees block out the sun and then they part and the sun dapples across your vision. Reminding you of the highs and lows, the trials and triumphs of this life.
You crest to the top and realize you must wind your way back down, back down to your life, your home, your thoughts. The drive is quicker, the scenery familiar. The degrees climb back to as your thoughts return to the tasks waiting. The humidity presses down like responsibility waiting. And even though this all weighs heavily on you, the sense of thankfulness equally weighs. Thankful for a moment of peace, for the wind in your hair. Thankful your grown kids want to take a drive with you. That you have the freedom to make the drive. That with each bend in the road, each mile you drive takes you back to the sanctuary of home. The ride lets us explore our thoughts, emotions and imaginations. Coming home wraps us up in a sense of peace and gratitude. Coming home to the four walls that houses us, that is a shelter in the storms of life, a house that has windows that let us dream about the drives and opportunities to spark adventure. A simple drive with a conundrum of thoughts, a simple place we call home. A moment in time with time in that moment.