Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Lisa

Finding a way through the darkness: Review of Night Driving by Addie Zierman

In the middle of a bitter cold winter in Minnesota, a mom and her two young sons flee in search of the light and warmth of Florida. It is a desperate act, a search for inner light as much as sunshine, and it brings surprising results.

Night Driving: A Story of Faith in the Dark is Addie Zierman’s account of this road trip and the things she discovers–about herself, her faith, and God–along the way. (Disclaimer: I received a free copy of the book from the publisher in exchange for my review.)

Some people called her brave to embark on such a trip, but it’s a badge Zierman is reluctant to wear.

My heart is not, in the end, cut from an adventurous, seafaring cloth. I am, generally speaking, a homebody, content with very little adventure in my life. I chose this trip not because I am brave but because I was desperate. (p. 5)

Zierman writes about how she could no longer feel God’s presence like she could when her faith was “on fire” in her youth and how she tried–and still tries–to fill the void with wine and flirting and anything that makes her feel something. Her trip with her boys, 4 and 2, was as much a search for sunshine as an attempt to escape from her own self. But as she journeys, she realizes that she can’t outrun the darkness, even in the Florida sunshine.

What I love about Zierman’s writing is that it doesn’t sugarcoat or paint a pretty picture. It’s gut-level honest. This dream of a road trip has its nightmares–as one might expect traveling thousands of miles in a van with two toddlers. There are numerous McDonald’s stops and bathroom breaks and a Diet Coke incident that made me want to give Zierman a hug. There’s rain at the beach and sleepless nights and doubts about whether this trip was a good idea in the first place.

But there are also precious conversations with friends, one glorious day at the beach, and subtle changes. Reminders that darkness and silence and solitude are part of the rhythms of faith, not evidence of the absence of faith.

Maybe I’m a snowbird–or maybe I’m not. Maybe all this ever was was a case of mistaken identity. I thought I needed to fly away to survive. I’d forgotten about the simple ways we are saved exactly where we are. (p. 178)

Through her own journey, Zierman grants us permission to wrestle with our faith when the light seems to have gone out, and to realize that we can see in the dark; our eyes just might need time to adjust.

If you’ve ever wanted to escape when the darkness closes in, to flee toward warmth when the temperatures start to dip, find encouragement in this book.

To launch the book, Zierman invited people to share their stories of faith in the dark places. You can read my contribution here and follow links to her site to read others’ stories as well.

Why I don’t like the term ‘working parent’

I’m new to this.

Before I was married, I worked a full-time journalism gig for 7 years, and then for another year after marriage while my husband finished his undergrad. We had a baby during that year, and I continued working full time while my husband went to school and stayed home with our daughter on the days he didn’t have class. A patchwork of volunteer babysitters from our church helped us out on the other days, and though I was technically a “working parent” at the time, it didn’t feel like a big deal. My husband made dinner and babies sleep a lot, so although my time with our daughter was limited, I knew it was temporary and she wouldn’t remember it anyway.

Then we moved to Pennsylvania and my husband started seminary and I stayed home with the baby girl, who would be followed by a baby boy a year and a half later. It made sense for me to stay home, even though our income was severely limited and we had to rely on government assistance to get by. Had I worked, we still would have had child care costs and a whole lot more stress. I know this decision is not a popular one and opens us up to criticism, but it was what our family needed to do to get by.

It would be years before we had stable full-time income, and in those years, while parenting small children, I tested the freelance writing waters. Here and there I sold an article. I started blogging to keep myself sane because writing is a lifeline for me. But parenting was my main job, and I didn’t always do it well, but I did it.

We’ve always known, at least I think we have, that when the kids went to school, I would focus on my writing and do what God has called me to do, and seek to make money at it, even if it never “paid the bills.” Phil said to me the other day that he feels like he works an outside job so that I can write. I don’t take for granted that I have a husband who supports and champions my dreams, even when I don’t have the energy or confidence to do it myself.

Photo by Negative Space via Unsplash

Photo by Negative Space via Unsplash

That’s where I find myself: with two kids in school full time, a husband working a full-time job, and me pursuing writing as both a calling and a career. For about six months, I’ve been working with a client on a memoir, which means that I am getting paid for a project that is time-consuming and demanding and a lot of fun. But it also means that I feel more like a “working parent.”

Most days, my husband goes off to work, and I get the kids on the bus, and then the day stretches out ahead of me in a rhythm of writing, eating, and housework. Okay, and some leisure. But today, that rhythm changed. I had a meeting with my client and I needed the car, so we all left the house at the same time. We dropped my husband off at work and then I took the kids to school, something I’ve never done before. Then I swung back by home because we’d forgotten to put the trash out. Knowing that this morning would be hectic, I spent part of last night printing out a copy of the manuscript for my client and making sure dishes were clean for lunches. We remembered too late, just before bed, that my husband needed work clothes washed, so into the washer they went at 11 p.m., into the dryer at 6:30 a.m. After my stop at home, I met my client at McDonald’s where we talked through some questions I had about his stories for almost two hours.

I get it, though. That’s nothing compared to what most “working parents” face every day. Also, I hate that phrase, “working parent,” because parenting by its very nature is work. It’s the hardest job I’ve ever done, and it’s endless in its demands. “Working parent” is redundant. I’ve been a working parent since my kids were born; now I’m just working at something besides parenting, or in addition to it. I’m ridiculously grateful that I can work for myself and set my own hours and pursue a craft that is mostly fun and enjoyable for me. So, that’s why I can only say that I sort of know what you parents who work at something in addition to parenting go through. It’s a teensy tiny glimpse.

I know that it’s easy for us parents to be hard on ourselves about any of our choices: to work a job outside the home, to stay home and work at parenting, to work from home and work at parenting, so can we just agree that whatever we decide to do is okay if it’s a right fit for our family and makes ends meet? That are lots of ways to be good parents and we’re all working at it the best we can?

Forget labels. Forget about the “shoulds” that other people try to place on your life and just do what you need to do. That’s what I’m telling myself today. I need to give myself that grace. Maybe you do, too.