Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

faith & spirituality

Beauty on the Backroads {or Why I Changed the Name of my Blog}

I’ve heard that life is like a highway. And it definitely seems like that sometimes. The pace of life swirls around me at dizzying speeds.

We’re all so busy. In such a hurry. Always somewhere to be, something else to do.

I’m a get-to-the-point, get-there-quick kind of girl. I don’t like to waste time on small talk or side trips. If I could figure out a way to do the 800-mile driving trip home without making a single stop, I would take it. At least, I think I would.

Before the day has even started, I’ve got a to-do list running through my head. Some days, my energy matches the list. Other days, like today, I can’t imagine accomplishing anything other than napping or reading or both.

The thought of even sitting down for a few minutes with my coffee and my Bible felt like too much effort. I wanted, instead, to just jump right in to all the things I think I have to do.

But I’m finding that at times like these, when I just want to rush through, check off my lists and get ‘er done, these are the times when I most need to stop. Pause. Sit. Listen.

It is often the harder work.

—

Maybe you noticed, or maybe you didn’t, but I changed the name of the blog this week. Thanks to my super-talented, highly creative friend Alison, the name/theme I’ve been mulling for a year or more finally sees the light of day.

Beauty on the Backroads.

Maybe it’s obvious what I mean by that, but I’m a writer so I’m going to explain it to you anyway.

In this fast-lane life, I’ve discovered beauty on the roads less traveled.

Anderson Aguirre

Anderson Aguirre via Unsplash

I mean this literally.

When we first moved to our current place of dwelling, we found we had numerous options for getting from one place to another. The fastest way is always the highway we can see from our house. And for a while, we took that route because we knew it and it was familiar. But with GPS on our phones, finding the back way, the country roads was a less daunting task than it could have been. I don’t like to be lost, and I am directionally challenged, so GPS is my safety net. (Although it has let me down before.)

These are the roads that offer views of the river. Old houses. Farms. Birds. Animals. Towering trees. Flowers. On the back roads, we’ve found one-lane bridges and covered bridges. We’ve seen farmhouses that make us feel we’ve traveled back in time. Because we live in Amish country, the horses and buggies are more prevalent on the back roads. We’ve discovered parks we didn’t know existed. Businesses we’ve never heard of. Roadside stands we never would have seen.

I won’t argue that you should never take the highway anywhere, but I would advocate for taking the back roads once in a while. You never know what you might see.

—

I mean this figuratively, too.

I used to think life was like a point A to point B kind of journey and the idea was to get from one to the other as quickly as possible. I don’t think I’m alone in this thinking.

Whether I’m driving or grocery shopping or just going about my business, I feel like everyone is hurrying past, getting on to the next thing.

In my 20s, all I wanted to do was get married. When we were married, all I wanted to do was have kids. When we had kids, all I wanted was for them to be out of diapers. And then to go to school. When my husband was in seminary, I just wanted it to be over. Now my kids are in school, my husband is working full-time and sometimes I just want to slow time.

I’ll be 40 in a couple of years, and I’m not in any hurry to get anywhere.

I used to want to have a successful writing career as soon as possible. I have tons of ideas that clog my brain but not enough time, or so I think. And I think I’m running out of time. Won’t the ship have sailed before I even had a chance to board?

But I don’t want to rush. I don’t want a hastily built life. That’s not what lasts in the long term.

So, I’m trying to pay more attention. To ignore the lure of the highway life that tells me I have to get to a certain point by a certain time or I will have failed to live correctly. To recognize that even if I’m not on the road I thought I would be on that there is beauty here.

I’m learning it’s less about where I’m going and when and more about how I’m going.

The back roads are slower. They meander. Sometimes the ups and downs, twists and turns make you sick to your stomach. But sometimes you catch a glimpse of something that makes your heart beat a little faster. Sometimes you get a little bit lost, but then you find your way through it and the next time it happens, it’s not so scary.

—

Beauty on the backroads. More than anything else it’s the theme of what I write these days. Things you read here on the blog, things I’ve yet to release to the world in book form.

I believe it’s okay to take the highway sometimes, and I believe it’s crucial to take the back roads at least once. I believe we’re all headed somewhere, but the way we get there isn’t always clear. Or straight. Or the same as anyone else.

I believe it’s important to tell each other about the beautiful things we see along the way, even if we find ourselves on a road we never meant to travel.

So, what have you seen on the back roads of life?

Endings and beginnings

They say it could snow this weekend, but today the sun shines and the trees tell a different story.

Spring is coming, they say. The buds cannot hide any longer, revealing the pinks and reds of a long-awaited season. Flowers cannot hold themselves back one more day. Their petals in yellows and purples announce, Here we are! as if they are travelers home from a long journey.

Biegun Wschodni via Unsplash

Biegun Wschodni via Unsplash

Winter is ending, even if snow threatens one more time. The season will soon be over and spring will take her rightful place in the order of the seasons.

Nature is no stranger to endings and beginnings. The world itself thrives on such change.

—

I used to think life was just like stories–with a clear beginning, middle and end. It was lived linearly, like the timelines students create in social studies classes to depict the major points in a person’s or country’s life. You’re born. You live. You die. The end.

What is more true, I’ve found, is that life is more cyclical. More like a circle or a spiral, perhaps.

And those cycles contain a series of beginnings, middles, and endings, some of them overlapping, and not all of them complete.

When I look at the stories I’m living, some of them, I don’t know how they end.

I’m tempted to wait to tell certain stories until I know how they finish, but my friend Shawn says we should tell our stories even when we’re smack dab in the middle of them.

So, we are at the end of one story and in the middle of another and if that sounds confusing, it is for us, too. But as the band Semisonic has reminded me for years, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

—

Some dreams are over before they even take off. Some crash and burn on the way. Others make a slow descent back to earth, without much fanfare, grounded after a season in the skies.

Some dreams will never fly again. Others just need some maintenance and love before taking off once more.

I think ours is this last kind of dream. We’ve been unexpectedly grounded, but we aren’t out of dreams, yet, and maybe it was time to retire this particular one and give another one a chance to fly.

Daria Sukhorukova via Unsplash

Daria Sukhorukova via Unsplash

Still, beginnings are exciting. Endings feel more like losses. Even if we can see the good to come, even if we know there’s a beginning on the horizon, an ending brings grief. And questions. And doubts.

Maybe we aren’t good enough to fly. Maybe we’ll never fly again. Maybe we were never meant to fly in the first place. It’s safer on the ground. What will we do if we don’t fly? What if we try again and fail?

The questions crowd us, like members of the media flocking to news. They press in and repeat their questions until we’re forced to acknowledge them. Sometimes it’s easier to believe the words from the loudest voices, even if they aren’t saying what’s true.

—

This ending, it should be the kind of thing that plunges me into panic and despair. It’s still fresh, only a week old. And it was unexpected, in a way, so sometimes I wonder if I’m just in shock, in a little bit of denial. Part of me wants to panic. To think and believe the worst. To give in to the voices that say it is some unchangeable fault in our lives that caused this.

I want to cry without stopping and stress eat my way through a bag of chocolates and scramble to fix the situation any way I can.

I want to. But I can’t.

Instead of despair, I find myself buoyed by a hope I can’t explain. This is going to work out, I think.

Understand, if you don’t know already, that I am not a Pollyanna, carefree type. I do not always think that things are going to turn out for the best. I am a realist, at best, a pessimist at worst. Optimism is not one of my strong points. And yet I can’t make myself believe that we are doomed. I mean, I could, if I thought too far ahead, beyond what I can see and know to be true.

There is an inexplicable peace that surrounds me. I cannot fix this. It’s too big for me to shoulder alone. I am tempted by both–to fix and to shoulder–but God keeps reminding me of His faithfulness. He will not slumber or sleep, I read in the Psalms. He tells the father of a daughter in need of healing that he must only believe. “I do believe! Help my unbelief!” the father replies.

I do believe.

Help my unbelief.

This is my prayer these days.

Will you pray that with us? That we will believe God still has good things planned for us. And that He will help us through our unbelief.

So, here it is: A what-are-you-up-to-now-God kind of story. One without an ending we can see or predict.

We’re smack dab in the middle. Dancing in the ashes of a burned-out dream. Singing through tears.

Will you join us?

I can’t promise you a happy ending. All I know is the end will come. And a beginning will take its place.