I traveled to Chattanooga over the weekend for a conference on sexuality in the church (you can read my recap on YOB; another post of mine premiering today). I packed up Jude in a pretty rotten headspace on Friday night, and then I hit the road home for Asheville two days later singing to the Backstreet Boys.
A lot can happen over a weekend. A lot can happen when you travel.
Or at least it does when I travel. Gosh, I miss the road. I miss it still.
I must certainly sound like a broken record by this point. But I’ll be screeching and skipping until Kingdom come.
I miss living along two yellow lines, always propelled by the next dash, and the next, and a pinpoint here, a pinpoint there, a first-time face-to-face conversation that turns into a friendship that turns into a heartfelt hug goodbye. I miss living presently, moment by moment, making the most of every passing city and relationship because you just never know when you’ll return.
I miss weekends like this last weekend, driving to one of my favorite cities in America, hanging with my favorite brother, attending a conference, meeting lots of new people, trading conversations across coffee and tables, and walking away from the weekend with new friends and stories alike.
It’s good, and then it’s great, and then it’s sad. And then it repeats.
I must sound masochistic, but I feel at home in this chaotic rhythm: leaving, staying a while, talking and walking and tackling a mountain or two, and then leaving again, and again, unwinding with the yellow lines leading me onward. Always leading onward.
Weekends like this past one refresh me. And I’m always grateful for returns to this rhythm I know and love well. A rhythm I long to relive as the broken record skips,
repeats,
repeats,
repeats —
