Today is the first day of my trip across the country. I have driven all the way from Jersey City to Manalapan, and I only took two or three wrong turns. I’d like to blame it on the GPS, but really that first wrong turn that messed up everything else about my trip was because I believed the GPS when it made a mistake. Oh well, I got to tour the city of Union, where a friend of mine works. It’s a once in a lifetime experience for those of us who don’t live there! haha :)
I am so tired that I am almost incoherent, so hopefully I am actually coherent as a writer. I wish I could write amazingly profound things tonight, but I even forgot the basics like writing down what the odometer on my car said before I left the garage. I am 47 miles from where I started today, so add a detour to say goodbye to loved ones and all my wrong turns, and I think it is fair to subtract 55 miles from whatever my odometer says when I get in my car tomorrow.
I don’t think I really said goodbye to loved ones though. I think I said see-you-later. There is such a difference between the two. One is the experience of death, and the other the experience of eternal life. I don’t feel like something is dying in my life right now; I feel like I and those I love are becoming more alive. We get to venture into the great unknown and discover all that God has for us.
There have been so many wonderful parts to this journey so far. Little things that remind me that God is present in every detail of my life and journey. The way God brought the perfect buyers for my three main pieces of furniture: an expert at taking apart IKEA furniture, someone with three sets of Allen wrenches (not just the one I needed) to take apart my bed, and a woman who absolutely adored the table I loved – albeit for six short months.
Today I saw George. He is a bus driver who hasn’t driven me in years; but when he sees me, he opens the door and hollers a greeting to me. He was leaning up against the wall by a convenience store as I passed by on the opposite sidewalk. He called out to me, and we had a short conversation. I didn’t have it in me to tell him that I was leaving town in a few short hours. Saying goodbye, er… I mean see-you-later, to all my dear friends was hard enough. But I loved that God winked down at me and aligned our paths to cross today. It’s one of the things I love about Hoboken. It’s a small town (next to a really big city).
I didn’t love it as I drove the 47 miles to where I am now. The traffic was overwhelming. The sign said “Speed Limit 65 mph,” and we were going something like 6.5 mph. Sometimes literally. I am so grateful that I will be leaving the East Coast traffic behind in the next few days. (And what is with the Jersey roads? The pot holes the size of cauldrons? With taxes like we pay here, shouldn’t they be a little more like the beautiful roads I ride on in northern California when I visit my grandparents? I digress…. and protest. haha)
God makes everything beautiful in its time.
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