Traveling across the country with your daughter and three small kids is like going to the circus. You sit in your seat, holding your breath, not knowing what the next act will be, but convinced that it will surely be entertaining.
However, it is not for the faint of heart! Kids’ bladders suddenly need to empty in the most impossible stretches of road construction. The car seat straps become almost claustrophobic to a 4-year-old boy, and he cries at a level that even this partially deaf Grandma can hear. Someone is always hungry, and soon snack crumbs reach amazing depths on the floorboards. Mama tries to be patient as she picks up yet another book or truck that falls from a little hand.
Nor is this kind of trip for the faint of muscle! Even with the aid of the hotel carts it takes more skill than I possess to maneuver all the suitcases, bags, cooler, and the falling apart pack-and-play through the hotel lobby, into the elevator, and out again, down the hall and into the room, so I leave that to my more capable daughter. Instead, I corral the kids, who are much like animals let out to pasture after being hauled across the country. They run down the hall ahead of us, with no real sense of direction, calling to one another, just glad for the freedom to move! I hurriedly follow after them, repeatedly admonishing them to be quiet in my loudest whisper voice.
We are back on the road again, on the last leg of our 2-day trip to Texas, the third trip in the last three months and I am weary to the bone. Why is it that the last 100 miles take as long to cover as the 1,000 we have already traveled? Like the kids, I am tired of traveling and want to get out of the confines of this vehicle.
The whining from the back seat is changing to full-blown wailing and my daughter, who knows her kids well, reaches for her phone and announces, “Let’s sing.”
Loud and lively music fills the air, drowning out the unhappy child in the back seat. And wonder of wonders, his voice soon joins with the other voices and varying degrees of harmony fills the air. It is not my particular style of music, but I decide it is better than crying.
The music perks up the kids, but I find to my dismay that all the songs my daughter chooses are about love, home, family, and being together… and these lyrics make me feel nostalgic and a bit homesick. I think of my husband, who has graciously put up with me being gone more than I’ve been home the last three months. This weekend will be Mother’s Day and he was very reluctant to say goodbye. We both prefer to be together on that day but it seems we will once again make a sacrifice so our daughter and her children can spend Mother’s Day with their daddy.
I glance over at my daughter to see if she notices my sober mood and moist eyes, but she is engrossed in her singing, belting the words out at the top of her lungs. Her eyes are sparkling, and it is obvious her thoughts are on the fact that in another few hours she will be with the love of her heart, the one her songs are talking about.
I listen half-heartedly as I watch the road ahead of me. Suddenly a song comes on that I have never heard before. It talks of the several billion people in the world and how there are millions of places any one of us could be, but we are right where we are. The words seem to reach out and grab hold of me, with a meaning the song never intended.
There are so many places I could be today. There are so many places in the world left for me to see. But today I am here, in this van, taking my daughter and her kids to Lackland, AFB so they can spend time with their daddy. And I know it is where I am supposed to be, even if a little part of my heart is sad that I am away from my husband and the rest of my children on this special weekend.
Each of us is in a specific place on this earth. Sometimes the place we find ourselves in is a pleasant, comfortable place. At other times it is in a hard place. A painful or confusing place. A place that we didn’t choose. Or a place we got ourselves into by making wrong choices.
Joseph found himself in a pit, and then a camel caravan, and eventually he experienced both a prison and the palace of a strange country. In each place he was in, he chose to allow God to use him and his situation for good. He ended up being the second in command over the whole country of Egypt, keeping several nations from starving to death.
Queen Esther found herself in a life-or-death situation. She too was far from her homeland. Living in the palace of a foreign country she was afraid to reveal her ethnicity. But as her cousin Mordecai told her, God had her in the palace “for such a time as this” and he used her brave willingness to rescue a nation from certain death.
Philip was one of Jesus’ disciples, and after Jesus had risen from the dead, set about to tell others that their sins could be forgiven. One day, he suddenly found himself on a road to Gaza and there he met a man who was reading the Scriptures, trying to understand what he read. Philip was able to lead the man to Christ and baptize him. What a beautiful, pleasant place to be in!
A verse from Psalm 37 comes to mind. It says “The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives.” Isn’t it a restful feeling to know that, as a child of God, you don’t have to stress over the course of your life or the situation you are dealing with today? Maybe you are enjoying a pleasant stretch on the road of life, with laughter and encouraging voices for your companions. Or maybe you are facing a life-or-death situation, the road shrouded in stormy darkness, and you find yourself clawing desperately for a way to control the outcome. Or like me, you could be traveling down a bumpy one that stretches on for miles and you long for earplugs to drown out the songs that make you dab at your eyes from time to time until suddenly God uses a very strange song to remind you that he is directing you, step by step, and delighting himself with every single detail of your life!
Wherever you find yourself today, God is there. He has a purpose for you. Use this place for good. You just might find that it’s the sweetest place on earth. Or at least, just the right place for you to be. For now.