Driving Me (_______)

According to some random statistic I dug up, 70% of Americans drive a car each day. Regardless if this is entirely accurate, it is safe to say many people drive each day – to work, to school, to who-knows-where. I drive to my fiancée’s house, to college, to church – hardly a day goes by when I don’t drive. This isn’t going to turn into a blog about going green; the point I’m trying to make is how something daily like driving can actually be a significant experience.

You see, as I look back on my few years of driving experience – well, I’ve packed as many miles of driving into those few years as possible – a curious thing strikes me in my attitude when approaching driving. There was a period of my life where driving was my salvation, sometimes: salvation from over-thinking, at the very least. At a time when I was un-employed, living at home, and doing anything I wanted and nothing I didn’t, there would be nights where at 11pm, 12am, 1am, I would have to drive. My thoughts would be driving me nuts, and I had to get on the road to clear my head. I eventually made a route around the four surrounding counties that encompassed 170 miles and took me better than three hours to drive. (This at a time when gas prices were over the $3.00 mark) But that was still a time when I could not live without driving.

Contrast that with a year later; I had started college, had a job, and the thought of driving made me sick to my stomach. The difference was, by then, I was stuck in a rut and blinded by a single desire for a girl. But I was meeting no one, and I traveled the same Y-shaped route from home to school to work to home. At that time, the driving I was doing was the epitome of the rut I was in. I felt if something didn’t change, I would be doing the same routine twenty years later, and that was encapsulated in the drive. One day I remember distinctly I turned left instead of right, just to take a different route home. I absolutely could not bear the thought of traveling that same route again.

Then, another year or two later, I don’t have a job, I’m still in school but at a different college – and driving is fun again. Something did need to change, but it wasn’t the route. I finally met a girl, and we’re engaged now; but at the old school I only went to classes four days a week. Now, it’s five days a week, further away, and the exact same route back and forth. It wasn’t the route that needed to change, or even the schedule; it was my heart. The biggest difference between the old route and the new route is that now I drive the route fully contented in Christ. I was a Christian, and have been since age five; but I was so distracted by dissatisfaction that I thought I had to get things to change. When I was stuck with the duty of school and work, I felt like I would never break free. But we are not always given freedom from our situation, but freedom in our situation in Christ.

Driving is something I must do every day, and it may seem the most basic thing; and sometimes I wish I could live nearer to things so I could ride a bicycle back and forth. But the driving can be my barometer; if I am happy in my driving, my spiritual life is often where it needs to be. When driving seems a chore, the dissatisfaction is almost always coming from somewhere else. That half-hour between home and school in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening also gives me one uninterrupted chunk of time in which to put in a good CD and worship God. Having that twice a day all week cannot but help to focus my thoughts where they need to be: on God.

Having that is one of the most beautiful things in the world.