Home Again: A Few Lessons Learned

We are safely home, and I always like to take a moment to reflect on what I’ve learned over the course of a trip. Here’s a top 10 list of things that tell you it’s time to go home.

1. When you notice that the outside thermometer on your car is reading -18.

2. When all the Christmas cookies are gone.

3. When you’ve started to forget that you have a dog (but your dog-sitting parents surely have not).

4. When you catch yourself trying to point out the Mississippi River to your children again, which produces somewhat infuriating, polite “mm hmm’s” from the children who think it really doesn’t look that different from the Grand River at home—just like you did when your parents tried to point it out to you.

5. When the stations play Phillip Phillips or Imagine Dragons or Matchbox Twenty about fifty times too many, and your 9-year-old is constantly requesting “Madness” by Muse.

6. When you realize that you are no longer offering to take over driving from your spouse because you are concerned that they are getting sick of it; you offer to take over so that you can control the radio.

7. When you find yourself thinking that maybe it might be worth stopping to see “Dinosaur Ridge” or the Vacuum Museum or the Mormon Trail Historic Site.

8. When the rear window of your van is so encrusted with dirt that even the windshield wiper refuses to touch it.

9. When you learn that one three hour musical, West Side Story, is enough and that the testosterone producers in the van will not suffer through My Fair Lady too.

10. When you find yourself carrying your Arby’s lunch garbage to the trash can at McDonalds where you just stopped for ice cream.

Bonus: When your hands smell like McDonalds’ soap (this observation compliments of Allison).

And here’s something else I learned on this trip. I (and I don’t think I’m alone on this one) spend an awful lot of time watching, reading about, or talking about the horrible things that happen in the world—the sadness and the sorrow, the disaster and the pain.

Thursday morning we started our trip home by driving from Fairplay to Denver. The car read the outside temperature as -18, as I mentioned above. Brutally cold. And this particular leg of our travel followed the South Platte River quite a long ways. The river wound its way alongside the road, like a child running alongside Grandma’s car making sure to see her face as long as possible.

The river was frozen about a foot wide on each side, but the majority of the river was rushing along as usual. Steam rose up from the water, giving it a mystical quality. The trees and bushes nearest to the river were white with frozen steam. It looked like a watery fairyland. Miles and miles of it, with mountains and hills stretching away from the river, frosted with snow and dotted with trees. There were very occasional houses or farms or ranches, some crumbling. In other words, there were very few people to enjoy all of this brilliance. But we were there, witness to the glory.

The world has more than its share of sorrow and sadness. But we are not abandoned to the darkness; God has filled the world with beauty and light, if only we take a moment to see it.