Driving for All Eternity

There's something weird about driving long distances. Spending hours in the car, in the same seat. Something strange starts to happen to you.

It's subtle at first. You work into it starting with that early morning alarm, the quick mental pep talk that tells you that the exciting things you have going today ate worth getting up hours before the sun.

Then you make it to the next town over and marvel at how that jaunt seemed like the blink of an eye. Then, if you ate fortunate enough not to be driving you have the luxury of getting to re enter a sleep like state, although arguably, you never left one, even as you packed up. By the time you make that first stop for gas and coffee, you are all hyped at how fast the trip is going.

This next leg is critical to the shift from normal to strange. In this next part of the trip you and your car mates fall into the "rhythm"  of the trip. By natural course you discover who sits closest to the best snacks, and who is most willing to divvy them out. You develop a balance for those who sleep, want to listen to music, want to listen to books on tape.

And then you look at the clock and realize you've been in this pattern for twelve hours. You try to think back to the morning and realize any life outside of this van has become hazy. You sit and say to yourself, don't be dramatic, you lived a normal life yesterday, you....well what did you do? All you can see is the passing of landscape. All you hear are the ramblings of the deep throated radio story teller. Surely you ran those errands last week....because there's no way you had any sort of normalcy as short a time as 24 hours ago.

You sit and try to imagine eating something other than the snack food so carefully packed and more messily strewn between the front bucket seats. Is there every anything other than pretzels to satisfy cravings? And when was the last time you used a plate? Silverware?

The stale air of the vehicle, that no matter what you tell the air conditioning to do, always carries with it a faint trail of stagnancy. That ever so slight headache, the thirst that is always a little less than quenched, because who knows when you'll stop next. The feeling that any moment an extended look down ward, or a bump in the road and that morning car sickness will return with a vengeance. All these things persist with such dependence that they become your strongest enemy in perpetuating the lie that this back seat is the only life you've really known and everything else is merely an Inception-esque dream.

You try to remind yourself of where you are going. Of the people or places that inspired you to undergo such a trek in the first place, but at this point the tired pulse that makes your eye balls feel like they are twice the size they should be only lets you see the part of the trip when you have to say goodbye and do this trip all over again. But that's okay because at this point if someone told you that you had driven this far for one meal, it would seem worth it because it would be something different than this.
This speckled gray mini van upholstery.

These ever present brake lights that seem to be on an extreme counter offensive mission to delay these hours even more.

The final stage is the one that saves you from swearing off these trips ever again. Its the moment, when at long last, you pull into the parking lot. You climb over the previously organized piles that have now become Everest like mountains and your feet hit terra firma. Suddenly blood makes it to your feet for what feels like the first time. You realize that your back had retained the ability to fully extend, and that the air does move. Then you look towards the faces approaching. The ones you've driven eternity to visit.

You sit together and eat real food on real dishes. You laugh. You look at your travel mates and suddenly only remember the laughter. You remember fondly all the stops, the brake lights, the new routes, because it was "all part of the experience". You marvel with each other that the drive "really wasn't all that bad". You laugh when you calculate that you've been in the car for fifteen hours, as if you can't imagine a better way to spend a day. Your memory returns, and the gift of being able to recall yesterday provides stories that take far later into the night than any one planned because you're, "really not that tired".

You spend your trip shoving away the thought that the warm fuzzy feeling about your road trip is a hoax and through yourself into the people around you. Because that is what is really true. The thoughts that fight each other as you drive....that make you doubt your ability to make good choices...those are lies, because the truth you know deep down is that it would be worth it. To drive 30 hours for one day with these people. To be together. To celebrate the lives we've been given.

Thank you so much for reading this blog, posted from my phone, written on the car in the 15th hour. And special congratulations to my sister Lydia, who's graduation from her Master's program we are gathering to celebrate. If you wanna know more about our road trip, find us on twitter @graymeetsworld.

(please ignore any spelling our formatting errors, like I said, this was sent from my phone).

US Highway 129

I turn right out of the Ingles and accelerate down the two lane road.

Many a writer and "scholar" has compared life to a journey, a road. I'm not sure about that, but there are certain roads that I love. Roads that tell a story about me. Roads that bring back stories that I have experienced. Roads that change with each pass. Roads like US Highway 129.

I accelerate up to somewhere between 55 and 60 mph, and hope I don't get stuck behind a large, "grandpa" motorcycle, driven by some bearded sexagenarian fulfilling his life long dream at 40 mph. Been there.

On my right, the sign that says, "You just passed Babyland" and laugh, imagining the one person who will see that sign and suddenly shout, "Oh SHOOT NO!" and pull a U-turn, bound for the birthplace of cabbage patch dolls.

I pass Yonah Bowl and Skate and a flood of memories emerge. Random dancing and picture taking with Dani, Owen and Thomas, watching Dustin, Bryant, Bekah, Lyd and Taylor race through crowds on the skating side, while I slowly and steadily find my feet underneath me and try to avoid the awkwardly grouped adolescents, one of whom has already tried and not-so-smooth pick up line.

I pass Linda's, and think of that tiny room with four washers and four dryers that half the staff counts on for clean clothes during the summer.

I pass the strange little store, specializing in Rebel paraphernalia, and remember a story I was told about the hijinks of the somewhat, and by that I mean completely, questionable woman who runs it.

Then I blow a kiss to my right as I coast past the lovely stone gates of Strong Rock Camp. I can not count the ways in which that place holds my heart.

Babyland General - it's a classy establishment

At this point in the road, my cell service all but disappears and I start to feel that strange feeling that I am leaving something behind. It feels like there are strings attached to my heart and as I drive further, they pull my heart, trying to get it through my shoulder blades and back to the people and places that hold their other ends. As I keep driving they stretch and twist and snap, begging me to stop and go the other way. I accelerate up the hills and curves, maybe a little too fast and Phala comes and whispers at me to slow down.

I pass Turners Corner and offer a silent wave to Dahlonega.

I head up the side of Blood Mountain, enjoying, maybe a little too much, the roller coaster turns. Phala shakes her head at me from the passenger seat, silently scolding me with her eyes. She knows better.

I start the more definite ascent and soon pass two crosses on the side of a curve. The larger one has been there, attached to the tree, for who knows how long. The name on each arm of the white-washed wood read, Phala Harper. I salute her every time I pass.

The name and my frequent passing of it, often on my own, have led to a characterization of sorts. In my head, Phala was a happily single 30-something, with chesnut red hair, that was maybe just a little too dry, and a made up face, that was maybe just a little too cakey. She worked the minor league tennis circuit and was on her way up. She liked to wear her white socks and mid calf, with white tennis shoes, and a matching visor. Every time I approach the mountain, my memory of her comes into the car with me, and reminds me to be careful, to be aware, to not let my guard down, to not go outside my comfort zone for the thrill. We ride the ascent together and she gets off when I reach the store at the top, biding me farewell till next time.

This may sound odd, and I think it probably is. I don't think she is actually there, and I don't really know anything about her, but her name was so striking that my imagination apparently couldn't just leave it on that plain white cross, it wanted to give Phala Harper purpose, and now she has it.

As I begin to coast down the opposite side of Blood Mountain, I pass the imaginary line that lies between, "call Daniel if I have trouble" and "call the Kough's if I have trouble". That's the thing about this road that makes me okay to drive it even at night. There's hardly a stretch of road anywhere else in the world that I am more covered by love and care.

I pass the runaway truck ramp, and think about my plan if I ever get stuck in front of one.

I pass the stretch of road that I sat on the shoulder with four boys after the old green Chevy overheated. We sat and talked and waited for it cool off before giving the one last pull over the mountain and back down into camp.

I wave to Vogel State park and think of all the day trips my family enjoyed there and resolve again to camp there sometime like the Brannon's do.

US Highway 129 over Blood Mountain

I come up to the Sunshine store and smile, because I am approaching the turn off to Richard Russell. In my mind I turn right, then another right and a left, down a long, uneven driveway. I blow a kiss to my dear friends, the Koughs, and let that expression of love float down the road, back to Toccoa, and across the ocean to Denmark and wherever else they may be scattered, and wish for the time when we can all just hang out and drink coffee and watch fun movies together.

I pass my favorite farm house with the odd, terraced, grass lawn.

I flip my headlights from bright to dim as a car with just running lights on one side approaches, throwing my perception with the offsides.

I come into the square of Blairsville and turn toward the hospital, careful to follow the stop sign that I ran on accident more than once, because the fact that it is an intersection is far from obvious.

I pass the hospital and turn at the lake, leaving the "call the Kough's" cloud and entering into the "call Chad and Erin" cloud.

I drive past the gas station at the Gum Log interestion and think fondly on the day that I embarked down it on a spontaneous adventure to find my way through the backroads to Brasstown without a map, or a GPS, just a full tank of gas and three road names ( one of which would prove to be incorrect).

I drive towards the North Carolina line, and salute, from my car, the friendly, Indian, man who seems severely out of place in my predominately white county, and works in the gas station on the border between states. Then, I honk twice as the pavement changes, just for fun.

I pull through the flea market and smile at the King Kong Zoo my little sister has been obsessed with, but to my knowledge, never attended.

I turn onto the four-lane and switch to low lights permanently and set the cruise. Just a few more miles before I enter into the most safe "call" cloud of all. The one where my call is to "Dad" who has a terrible habit of helping figure out all my problems and to "Mom" who has a terrible habit of letting me learn about grace, by practicing it, even when I mess up.

Almost Home

I pass through Murphy and smile at the black outline of my mountains, somehow even darker than the inky sky, uninterrupted by light in this stretch between towns.

I turn off the highway and drive past the river that holds one of my biggest fears. Drowning. Running off the road in the dark and into that water, while it just closes over the top of me. But fear has no power over me that I do not give it, so I face it, and stare it down.

I drive down a hill and remember the 'possum I accidentally ran over a few weeks ago, my first 'road-kill'. That's right, you can now call me 001.

I let the cornfields on my right, embrace me as I pass, welcoming me with their familiar stretch shapes, surrounding our small airport.

I turn left and up, and up. I turn left one more time. I am home. The strings that pull my heart are balanced by the pull of this house and the people in it, the people I will see tomorrow.

Thank you Lord, for the roads that you take me on and the stories you tell in my life.

What?

In keeping with our anti-theme, this picture has no real ties to
this post, but it always makes me smile.

What do you do when you have writers block? Do I even have writers block? What is the opposite of that? When too many ideas are in your head that you pick one to come out so they just sit there and accumulate until you still don't know what to write?

Do you write about the rain that has fallen steadily for four days? And how everywhere you go, the creeks have turned into fast and powerful rivers, and fields have turned into beautiful still pools, reflecting the gray sky above?

Do you write about your parents? And how hard they make you laugh with their goofy looks and exaggerated conversation? Or how much you appreciate the lengths they go to, to make you laugh and feel loved?

Do you write about how you have also had a growing appreciation for facebook and the advances that allow you to keep up, invest in, catch up with so many people? And how so many conversations have encouraged you, or put a smile on your face?

Do you talk about the weird dent in my life I feel sometimes that has to be made out of elastic because it always bounces back out? Do I talk about how I missed laughter today - and the people who live far away that keep laughing so hard?

Do I talk about the three journals lying on my bed that have helped soothe my mind, and simultaneously inspire more writing? Do I talk about all God has been teaching me through those? Do I list off things like, trust, prayer, perseverance, trust, Godly love, trust, prayer and letting the Holy Spirit have plenty of room in my life?

Do I talk about my guitar, and how it can't hold a tune since the neck broke, but I still have it out to learn to play it anyway, because I want to be able to bring music wherever I go?

Do I talk about how tired I am, but how full my day was that started 15 hours ago?

Do I talk about how insanely excited and blessed I am to be leaving tomorrow to go on a "tour de Georgia" stopping in Dahlonega, Lawrenceville, Dowtown ATL, Kennesaw, and beyond? Do I talk about what is really exciting is not the places I will see, but the people? Do I mention how full of love and hope I am for my camp sisters that I will be with?

Do I talk about how overwhelming thankful I am that my car's only problem was a loose sway bar and some unbalanced tires? And that the bill was less than a $30?

Do I go on to how much I love my town? With the honest, friendly mechanics? The librarians who take the time to know, not just your name, but care about your life? The signs declaring "We'll Keep Our Guns" that are posted in front of the sign welcoming travelers to town? That the front page news was on the demise of "Car-truck", a beloved parade feature for ten years?

Or do I tick off a bunch of past English professors and write a post that is nothing but questions?

Hey, what would you do in a situation like this?

Thank(mas): Car

(if you wanna know what's going one, click here.)

Today I acknowledge the gift of my car.

(Or rather, the car I am using for transportation purposes at this present juncture of life.)

In April of 2011 I rear-ended a green pick-up truck from Virginia at a stoplight on my way out of town. Nothing serious - I was going less than 15 miles and hour at the time and didn't even realize I had hit them till my hood curled up in front of me. However, it was a big enough hit to total my already low-valued car and end my minuscule career as a car-owner.

Since then I have survived off rides, walking, buses, and borrowed cars. These cars, an old Nissan that someone gave our family (and was also my first car), an old Plymouth someone gave our family, and a decent Buick that, you guessed it, someone gave our family, have been a blessing at various points in my life. 

The Buick is one of two cars that that belong to my father. Two because our neighbor willed them to him an old blue Chevy, and a decent white Buick, when he passed away. My father in turn drives a tiny, low power, high gas, no air condition or radio, curmudgeon of a truck. He's a pretty great father.

All last semester, when the Nissan was on its last legs, Dad let me drive the Buick. This summer at camp I didn't have a car (thanks all for the rides) and when I came back home to work, I got pre-approved for a car loan, but didn't want to rush into anything.

Dad surprised me on Labor Day by suggesting (where he had previously suggested loan) that instead of getting deeper in debt, I just take over expenses on the Buick, since we're all trying to save money. It would help him by cutting down on insurance, and maintenance bills, and help me by allowing me to just focus on my school loan.

The Buick takes me nearly 250 miles a week on average, between my three jobs, running errands, visiting people (like my grandmother) and it does so faithfully.

It has heating and air conditioning, and a working radio that has allowed me to attach a cd player to, so I can have music of my own choosing wherever I go. (See previous post on music).

The backseat holds my extra jackets, discarded cd's, a box of tissues, books for my classes and all the packages that tote from work to the post office.

I absolutely love that it takes me to see so many people I love. And helps me give rides to even more.

I am mostly appreciative that so far, it is a literal gift from my father, to be able to use it and it is also a blessing to be able to drive it, and be mobile, and it is a gift from God that cars were even invented, so that Buick is a gift, upon a gift, upon a gift.

All of them gifts, acknowledged.

(see next post here)

35,000 Feet

Good Morning Hartsfield Jackson International Airport

I am writing this from the skies. Technically by the time you read it I will have landed, because I am not paying for in-transit internet. 

I am by no means a veteran of the skies, but I like flying more and more every time I do it. 

I love checking in and imagining all the fascinating people the skycap’s get to see. 

I love wandering through the massive concourses and atriums, and think about the people that designed and built them. 

I love standing in line to go through security with hundreds of other people, all just hoping we won’t get pulled for a random pat down or bag search. 

I love that I can traverse forty different back routes through the mountains of North Carolina, but I have to follow signs and take trains to make it from security to my gate.

I love seeing all the different people move around me, and knowing that each and everyone of them has their own unique story going a million different directions, but for this one moment we are united in need get to the top of the escalator, board a plane, make it to Denver. 

I love sitting in the plane and see the sky and the horizon meet in a snowy haze. 

I love watching the clouds underneath me look like homemade whipped cream, fresh from the beater.

I love thinking about the people in the houses, towns, and cities below me going about their lives; taking their kids to school, grocery shopping, cleaning houses, going to work, drinking coffee, meeting new people.

I love seeing the patches of fuzz where we have allowed the earth to remain free, and trees to grow.

I love seeing rivers snake through the earth, connecting country and commercialism.

I love how the slow passing of the landscape paired with the knowledge that we are doing in 2 and half hours, what takes some people two and a half days. 

I love that the turbulence almost comforts me, because of my childhood growing up in old cars with poor suspension. 

I love watching the conservative sexagenarians, engaged in conversation with the thirty year old shaggy redneck.

I love the way I want to get germaphobic if I think about how many people sat in these seats, or breathed this same air, or leaned their head against this same window.

I love that I can’t wrap my mind around how a craft that makes a house looks small, gets itself off the ground and stays in the air, but God made a people who not only understand it, but invent it. 

I love the ever present reminders of how little I know, and how little I control. 

But I think most of all - I love where I am going. Usually to see family, but this time even more so, to meet my niece and see my brother, the father, for the first time. 

Mississippi River

Me on the other side of the Mississippi for the first time!

Hello Denver.

Hello CALLIE!

Home is Where I'm With You

God has replaced Philip Philip's voice. Exemplifying what my Mom says, God's truth can be everywhere.

I realized the other night that almost every time I refer to a decision or move I have made in the past I say, "we went", "we did". The "we" I am referring to is not another person, or my schizophrenic personality, it's God.

This has not been a conscious shift, but a gradual and sure one. I trace a key origin of the idea to my third summer at camp. This summer was the last one before I moved away from home for the first time. During the dedication that we have the night before the campers come, my director spoke about God as Abba. Abba is the name that the Jewish children would call their fathers, much like our "daddy", he said.

I have been blessed with a fantastic father. My whole life he has gone with me. Carrying me as a child, leading me as I approached adolescents and walking alongside me as I have come awkwardly stumbling into adulthood. As such, one of my least favorite things about going to school was moving five hours from him.

That night God began transformation of my ideas of Himself. God was my daddy. He goes with me, stronger, wiser, more loving and more able to teach than my earthly father will ever be. I went to school that fall in a shaky revelation that I had a daddy who would never leave.

Over the past two years, God has time and again reiterated this concept to my soul, so that it is now nearly impossible for me to imagine going anywhere on my own. "I" am now a forevermore a "we". I have become less reliant on things I always thought I'd need, because my concept of "home" is changing. "Home" is no longer limited to an address, a town, or a building.

My "home" is steadily becoming God, therefore my earthly equation of "home" has and is becoming not a structure, but His body.  My parents house is home because they are there and because my brothers and sisters will return there. But I can meet my brothers and sisters in a restaurant in a city I have never been to before and feel equally at home.  Camp is a home, not for where it is, but for the people within the gate. I can spent a weekend with member of my camp family in Athens (first time there) and as I drove away, all I could think was, "I have not felt so at home in a while."

All of this has come to the forefront of my mind and heart in the last few months as God has put me in the place of circumstantial isolation. I am five hours from friends at school, an hour and a half to three hours from camp family, and even experiencing the longest isolation from my brothers and sisters that I ever have.  It has felt like pieces of my heart being ripped away, but now I am seeing that is is God pruning and trimming my vine (John 15).

God is taking away crutches of anything in my life that I have been unconsciously giving glory to. In my mind I have never felt so alone, but in that, God has redirected my heart and took back His glory. Because even those loving relationships are truly nothing without God.

I thought that "home" would be the theme, if you will, of my semester, because I was moving back to my parent's house. I prepared myself and my heart against creating grudges, or bitterness against this place and my parents. I had no idea, what God really had in store for me, and the exciting thing is, there will  be even more. And because God is becoming more so than ever, my home, and my confidence, I know I am ready, because "I" am a "we".

(See coinciding post here)

"A Lone Wolf Set Loose Upon North Georgia"

Today was my day off and my biggest goal was to sleep. Done. Woke up at ten. Delightful. 

My family came to see me for a few hours and we sat in a park and talked and watched a squirrel literally do flips. Wouldn't you know I didn't have my camera. 

I came back and wandered aimlessly for a while before settling down to a kind of sad movie. Not the best three and half hours of my life. 

Then I went outside to write in a journal, which is below and the rest of the night will be in the pictures. 

Melancholy. 

It's not sadness, but it manifests itself similarly. 

The feeling that there's a blender at the bottom of your chest. Like it's creating a vacuum that churns your stomach and pulls on your heart till your insides feel like an indistinguishable mass. 

This is a symptom of sadness or of melancholy. 

Sadness is an attack, but melancholy I think is simply a complete inability to process, brought on by exhaustion.

So in an effort to combat the melancholy that makes me want to curl up in a ball and sob till I am drained of everything that could be confused, I'm redirecting with a list of things that make my heart happy.

1. The perfect asymmetric design of the white clouds, stretched out across the perfect blue of the sky. A sky so blue that the exact color has never and will never be harnessed or trapped to any medium other than reality.
2. That Laura, our photographer, just narrated her approach to hug me. "A walk, into a run...into a...jump!"
3. That I woke up and put a skirt on. I literally always wear bike shorts on under my skirts and dresses, but stil, wearing it and feeling the wind move the fabric around my knees or hearing the swish sound it makes as I walk. Something about wearing skirts makes me want to run on my tiptoes and use the words, "Flit" and "Flutter". 
4. Similarly, walking in bare feet. Something about being so solidly connected to the earth makes my hippie heart happy.
5. The phrase, "my hippie heart".
6. Finding different ways to capture and record life.
7. The silhouette of the leaves and trees against the sky.
8. Composition books and G2 pens. 

This is all I have written in the entry. For the purposes of this blog I am continuing the list for the rest of the evening. 

1. The smile on Danielle Harris's face and the way she let me borrow her car and escape the crazy melancholy of sitting by myself at camp.
2. Nearly every Ingrid Michelson, or He is We, song.
3. Overalls
4. The way my wheels turn while wandering Walmart alone. 
5. The conversations you have at random with cashiers in Walmart or Ingles.
6. Sitting by myself at the counter in Huddle House and enjoying a Western omelet and cheesy hash browns.
7. The conversations that people have with each other. (I heard a lot about eating cake from the cooks at Huddle House). 
8. The conversations that people have with me, especially after I tell them I can't eat bread. In case you were wondering the cook who expertly flipped my eggs in the pan by throwing it up in the air and catching it back "blows up" when she eats bread, but she still does. But she's starting to break the habit. She also compassionately scraped the griddle before cooking my food to get any break crumbs off. 
9. People surprising you with unexpected compassion.
10. Finding a present for someone that makes them laugh.
11. The feeling of being back with people, because going so long without interaction left a small hole in my fabric of being that was only partially filled by hugging a bunch of people and laughing way too hard with Mary Beth and Katlyn.
12. The way writing is therapy, worship, creativity and a processor at the same time.

PS - The title is what my sister said about me in a text when she asked what I did with the rest of my day.

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