Highways with God

I think I could start all of my posts with "My life is loud." It's a good place to start. It sets the mood quickly without a lot of words. I hear lots of talk about how busy we all are as a culture, though, so maybe your life is loud, too. Even my inner life is loud. When the kids are asleep, I still have thoughts, fears, worries, dreams, and to do lists running through my mind like a freight train. I never slow down because my life is always ahead of me and I'm running to keep up.

Because my life is so loud, I have an unenforced 'no music' law in my truck. No one agrees on music choices and playing music can actually create noise instead of melody. It's rare when we are all sing the same song without someone complaining. If we sing songs Cade knows (Itsy Bitsy Spider), Pearce is rolling his eyes. If we sing songs that Pearce likes (Bruno Mars), Cade is yelling, "It's too loud (translation: Iss too roud!)!

We normally skip the music in the car and just talk over each other.

It's because of this I enjoy road trips on my own so much. I plug in my iPod and play my favorite songs. It's in this time alone that God usually finds me. I'm vegging out - zoning on the highway and a song will come on. Because it's on my iPod, it's always a song I'm familiar with, but for some reason, it hits me anew.

And I'm helpless to what happens next. The song will speak to me. I mean, REALLY speak to me. Right where I am in my life. One of the funny musings I've discovered about these moments is how quickly it happens. I'm just sitting there singing and the words will disappear in my throat. A gurgle comes out instead. Water literally bursts forth from my eyes. My nose abruptly stops up and starts running at the same time.

I'm suddenly hyper-aware of the people driving in the lanes next to me, but I'm too afraid to make eye contact with them because I'm really leaking. From my eyes and nose. Why is the Kleenex box on the floorboard!?!?!? Gargh!!!!

I should change the song, compose myself, and slow a little so the people to my left and right will be far ahead of the sobbing, silently singing stranger. But I don't. I turn it up, I listen more deeply, soak in the moisture from the air around me in order to create even more tears.

Then, there is a peace. A knowledge that God is with me in the song and in my heart - and even leaking out of my eyes. I am emptied of all the noise and then filled with peace and sometimes revelation. I am grateful for those moments of restoration - regardless of what the drivers around me think. And regardless of an almost guaranteed lack of available Kleenex.