The Country Drive

For two people deeply in love, anytime spent together is satisfying and yet also painful. Painful? Yes. We know that this time together is temporary and so we attempt to forget time altogether and sink fully into the moment. This of course is impossible because the sun eventually goes down, bodies need to be nourished and fatigue lingers closely behind us. This human form is not eternal and so we must take "time" to enjoy each other inside of this Earthly clockwork.

If you ask me how I do this, I would tell you that some conditions for this enjoyment are as follows: a sunny or partly overcast day, a car or truck but preferably an old VW bus, music by ipod, radio, tape, etc., windows that roll down, and my husband. In the sweet youth of our love, we also threw in a bag of Baked Lays and a bottle of Fruitopia. Those last condition no longer apply because Fruitopia no longer exists and we are older now and cannot eat an entire bag of chips without suffering for it later. (We replaced the chips with Hot boiled peanuts(a southern classic) and the occasional Slurpee or Gatorade.)

T. S. Eliot wrote "April is the cruelest month" and I shall add to that: "Sunday is the cruelest day". I attend church with my family, contemplate the sacrifice made on my behalf, share in the communion with brothers and sisters and sing the hymns with joy and thankfulness. This is a blessing and so it would seem that Sunday is the most Glorious of days. But that is just not the reality of it for me.

I bustle through my week with homeschooling, schedules, soccer, gymnastics, meetings, church studies, parties etc...By the time Friday evening comes, I am exhausted, and I want my husband back from work. His job is stressful and not always fulfilling. We have dreams and we have plans and they are not a part of of our daily life. So on the weekend we detox from our weekly drugs that keep us plugged in and engaged in the present. We sleep later, we read deeply, we eat at random times, we get dirty, we nap longer and we listen to a lot of music in the background.

Come Sunday, I want to fellowship with other people not on our planet. So when we go to church, we do just that. Then we pack ourselves back into our van and go home. I feel sick the whole way. I hate that the hamster wheel will start again in less than 24 hours.

So, I propose a country drive. What you love to do does not have to change just because you have 4 kids bouncing around in the backseat. We are all cowboys at heart. We want to explore and find a treasure like Cortes and chocolate. I feel that this desire is truly Human. God said "Go and take dominion" and while it may be a bit out of context here, I do not think He meant to stay just outside the Garden gate and set up camp for all time.

So, we set off, GPS ready, to get lost in the country. And a Discovery was made and what we found was something overwhelming. Not in an incredible mountain view way, or a munchkin land kind of thing. But for my husband it was like God saying to us, I love you, I know you and I know what you love and desire. This may sound silly, but what we found was breathtaking in a rusty, dilapidated sort of way. We discovered 2 (maybe more) acres of land absolutely covered in-------.