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Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

travel

These things I can’t forget

July 1, 2017

We’ve driven these roads dozens of times over the years, hauling children and their stuff back and forth between Pennsylvania and Illinois. They throb with the familiar, pulse with memories. The laughter, the tears, the twice-as-long-as-it-should-take trips, the smoother-than-expected ones.

When we weave through the mountains, my soul stirs at the beauty. We’ve seen them snow-covered and bare, shadowed in the pre-dawn light. Their beauty struck me anew this last time. Everything was so brilliantly green. The sun was already casting its light on the mountains. My breathing slowed, my mouth temporarily agape.

We know what we are in for when we cross the state line into Ohio. Mostly flatness, but even this has its own kind of beauty. As a child of the flatlands, acres of farmland stretching as far as my eyes can see will always spark feelings of home. The hours across Ohio are some of the most uninteresting of the trip, and yet my breath catches for a different reason.

I will never forget what happened here.

Photo by Rucksack Magazine on Unsplash

—

I’m not always good at remembering but when I am, I seem unable to forget.

The memories flash in my mind as if they happened recently or are happening now. Sometimes I can feel the same feelings. It is both a gift and a burden.

—

On this stretch of Ohio road, I remember the wind and the ice, the trucks traveling faster than was safe. I remember the third lane, the one I shouldn’t have been in. I remember the days leading up to this trip, how I wallowed on the couch, ill, taking sick time from work before taking vacation days because I couldn’t break my fever, couldn’t conquer the cough.

We persisted with our trip, though, because it was crucial, we thought, to our future. Sometimes I wonder what would have been different if we had given in to the obstacles and turned around. Or canceled. But try as we might, we can’t change the past, no matter how much we might want to step into the memory and give warning. Or permission. What would I say to the girl pressing through illness and snowstorm to please the man she loved? I don’t always know. Sometimes I am still that girl.

I remember losing control of the car, the one that didn’t belong to me. I remember Phil saying, “It’s going to be okay” as the front of the car hit the concrete median at 75, how we spun, I think. How minutes earlier we were being passed by semis and how a fleeting thought was certain we would die. I remember seeing the back end of a pick-up truck glance our car. I remember coming to a stop on the opposite shoulder. We were upright. Alive. I had hit my head on the side window. A gallon of milk in the cooler had exploded, showering the interior with a white substance we at first couldn’t identify.

A man pulled up and asked if we were okay. He said help was on the way. Traffic streamed by as if nothing had happened. I couldn’t believe we were alive. I remember the officer interviewing me about my speed. He handed me a ticket. I remember the tow truck driver and how we squished into the seat together. I remember the phone calls Phil made, to his parents, to our pastor friend who was waiting for us in Pennsylvania.

I don’t remember much after that except that we removed what we needed from the car. We got a rental. And Phil drove the rest of the way, through the snow in the mountains with trucks passing us. I remember being tired and terrified.

All of these memories flood my mind when we drive that road in Ohio. Whether it is January or June, I can’t ever forget. It feels important to remember that it could have turned out so much differently.

—

It is an annual fact that our kids spend a couple of weeks in Illinois with their grandparents. When I tell people this, most other parents are jealous, even though we go months without seeing family. I don’t always understand the jealousy but I’m thankful that we have the opportunity. It is life-giving for the kids. And for us.

—

Our hometown has a festival every summer, near the Fourth of July. It is one of my favorite things. Last year, I got to go home for it for the first time in many years, thanks to a well-timed class reunion I didn’t want to miss. There is a fair, and food, a parade, fireworks and all the people you haven’t seen in ages. The whole town, it seems, comes out for some part of it. Did I mention its central theme is petunias? There are worse things.

I’ve attended dozens of Petunia Festivals in my life. A few stick in my mind. Like the year my best friend and I decided to ride the Zipper for the first time. We screamed the whole time and afterwards, she threw up behind one of the concession stands. There were the years I was on some kind of official assignment for the newspaper. The years our summer softball team rode on top of a fire truck in the parade.

The pancake breakfast is always a highlight. Eating a stack of pancakes and a side of sausage under a tent near the river, shooing away flies, sweltering in the heat. It sounds awful when I describe it, but it’s a tradition. Last year, we took my grandpa with us. I sat across from him and smiled every time someone stopped to greet him. He was a teacher in the local school system, then manager of the Dairy Queen, then a pharmacy driver. He was a character everyone seemed to have a story about, quick with a joke, and with the kind of memory that surprised you for a nonagenarian.

When our weekend came to a close, we took this picture.

I didn’t know it would be our last. Our last group picture: my kids and my grandparents. Our last memories of pancakes in the park, of stories of Grandpa “babysitting” the kids (or maybe it was vice versa) and accompanying them and my mom on a tour of our hometown’s parks.

My kids are in Illinois right now and this is what I am thinking of. How this time last year, they were having a blast with all of their family and none of us knew that three weeks later, we’d be back in Dixon for a funeral.

—

Photo by Larm Rmah on Unsplash

I think this is how July will always be for me: joy in the beginning, grief lurking in the shadows, waiting its turn. Maybe this is how all of life is: seasons of joy and sadness, celebration and grief. Maybe all memories hold a mixture of emotions and not a single one can be classified as only “good” or “bad.”

Were the good memories all good and the bad memories all bad? I’m not sure anymore.

 

Filed Under: beauty, faith & spirituality, family Tagged With: family, july, memories, travel

When PB & J tastes like manna (and other nomadic thoughts)

January 14, 2013

I’ve heard lots of words fill in the space after “Home is …” and today, after two long driving journeys in two weeks, my mind is as blank as that space and I have no words to fill it.

It was good to be home–the place where we grew up, made memories, continue to make memories, bump into people we haven’t seen in years, and are welcomed with open arms by family and friends.

And it’s good to be home–the place where our stuff lives, the only house in which our kids remember living, our non-native state that still causes our breath to catch when we first glimpse its mountainous views, the place where good and bad memories duke it out for dominance, our legal address, where we are missed and embraced and yet sometimes still treated like strangers.

We’ve made the 800-mile drive between Illinois and Pennsylvania at least a dozen times and this was the hardest for me.

For starters, I hate the driving. Although I like seeing new places and having adventures, I become anxious about the journey–that in-between state of not being here or there.

road

The journey is unpredictable. I never know if our daughter is going to be car sick or how many times we’ll have to stop to pee or if we’ll be slowed by construction or an accident or rain or snow.

And it can be dangerous. The car might break down. Or slide on the ice into a concrete median and cross three lanes of traffic, totalling your future in-laws’ car and lengthening your cross-country trip by hours. (Yeah, that happened once.)

It’s tiring. How can riding in a car for so long be so draining? We play car games and answer the kids’ questions and toss food back at them (kind of like feeding zoo animals) and listen to talk radio and read. And it’s exhausting, especially if we try to do it all in one day.

But the journey is worth it if the destination is.

Driving home to Illinois hasn’t always seemed worth it. There have been seasons we’ve needed some separation from our families and the trip felt like duty, more for the kids than for my husband and me. But the two weeks we just spent there were TOTALLY worth it this time around (Read the highlights here.) We missed Christmas with our families so we were extra eager to get there and do whatever it took (we drove through the night on New Year’s Eve).

The return trip home to Pennsylvania has often been a welcome relief. A chance to get back to normal and into the routines that fill our days.

Not so this time around.

We’re stuck in a dead zone of sorts right now. Back to “normal” is nothing exceptional. My husband has a job he likes but it’s not what he wants to be doing with his life and it doesn’t meet our financial needs. We are lacking a level of love and community we’ve experienced at other times and places in our lives. We feel stuck. Neither here nor there with work, ministry, friendships, even our faith.

If you know the story of the Israelites and their desert wanderings, as recorded in Exodus and Numbers, our current state feels a little like that. desert

We are following God’s leading, but we feel like we’re walking in circles.

As I slapped together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches once again for dinner (our kids aren’t complaining!) I thought about God’s provision of manna. How the Israelites complained about needing food to eat in the desert and God provided. And they rejoiced. For a while. Then they complained again and longed for the food they ate as slaves. (Leeks! Onions! Fish! Cucumbers!)

God is giving us daily bread (and meat and fruit and cheese) from a variety of sources, and I thank Him for it.

And I complain because we are needy and dependent and may have to reapply for food stamps because we don’t know how long this season of underemployment will last.

I want to scream “WHERE ARE WE GOING, GOD?” and I’m waiting for the next terrible thing to happen. Life is not as good as it could be right now and the pessimist in me is afraid it will only get worse.

Maybe these are just the tired ramblings of a lost girl.

One thing I know: I am not alone on this journey.

Many are saying,

“Oh, that we might see better times!”

Lift up the light of your countenance upon us, O Lord.

This is my plea from the desert.

Filed Under: faith & spirituality, holidays Tagged With: family visits, God's provision, long drives, manna, road trips, travel, wandering in the desert

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Hi. I’m Lisa, and I’m glad you’re here. If we were meeting in real life, I’d offer you something to eat or drink while we sat on the porch letting the conversation wander as it does. That’s a little bit what this space is like. We talk about books and family and travel and food and running, whatever I might encounter in world. I’m looking for the beauty in the midst of it all, even the tough stuff. (You’ll find a lot of that here, too.) Thanks for stopping by. Stay as long as you like.

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