Thanksgiving and the last hour
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I’m back from a glorious Thanksgiving with my family.
I got to see my sister pregnant for the first time. So
sweet!
And I got to spend Thanksgiving with my entire family. If you’ve been around here in past years, you’ll know that Thanksgiving, while my
favorite holiday of the year, has been a bit of a bummer for me. Normally, our
Thanksgiving plans consist of just the five of us, so when I think about
creating a beautiful meal, setting out the good china and silver, and having
just five people around our table, it doesn’t set quite right with me.
So we’ve resorted to eating out. Still, a bummer, but better
than the alternative. I think.
Anyway, this year was awesome. For so many reasons.
The week before we left, I had already started to dread the
drive home. B wasn’t going to be able to drive home with us because he had to
fly from Dallas to a business trip. I knew I had to make the 900 mile drive
myself with the girls. Thankfully, I had two more drivers, and Julia was
willing to help out in a pinch (*wink wink*), so I knew we’d be fine.
But the drive. Ugh. Nine hundred miles is just a LONG WAY.
We made it. In fact, we cruised. My girls are awesome
travelers—lots of early training—so they just hunkered down and didn’t complain
at all. We only made quick stops to go to the bathroom or to grab some ice
cream, but aside from that we just didn’t stop.
We made the trip in 14 hours. Very nearly a record.
(Never let it be said that my small bladder is to blame for
longer road trips. We managed just fine, thankyouverymuch.)
Anyway, somewhere along the way I had mentioned to the girls
that the last hour of the trip was the worst for me. I knew the road like the
back of my hand, and because of that, I just wanted to be HOME.
I also knew that, statistically, the last hour of the trip
was the most dangerous. People put down their guard or something like that.
We had just passed what is, for me, that awful point where I
feel like I can’t take it anymore—about one hour from home—when I noticed that
the cars on the other side of the road were beginning to back up.
“Hey,” I said to the girls, “Check out the traffic on the
other side of the road. We must have missed seeing an accident because the
traffic is really backed up over there.”
There was probably a 2-mile traffic jam, but then traffic
was moving again . . . for about a mile. Suddenly, we came upon fire trucks,
ambulances, and police cars almost completely blocking the other side of the
highway. Again.
This time the accident looked serious.
We were marveling at the traffic—commenting about how these
poor people would get through one terrible jam, thinking they were free of it,
and one mile later come upon another back-up that was just as bad, if not
worse, than the first—when all of a sudden we saw a THIRD crash. This time it
was just a rear-end situation, probably common when traffic slows down suddenly, but still, three crashes in a stretch of about five miles.
We were amazed . . . and so grateful that the accidents were
on the OTHER side of the highway and not on ours.
Needless to say, I gripped the steering wheel a little
tighter and slowed down just a bit.
One of my girls said, “Can you imagine having to sit in that
mess? I feel sorry for the people further on down the highway—they don’t know
what they’re about to go through. I feel like we should warn them or something.”
Now, I’m not one to over-spiritualize things, and I didn’t
feel the need to point this out at the time, but the lesson was obvious to me
and I kept turning it over in my mind for the rest of the car ride.
Here’s the thing. If you knew that your friend, family member,
or co-worker was headed for a figurative traffic jam of epic proportions,
wouldn’t you want to warn them?
Wouldn’t you want to say, “Hey, you’re heading down the
wrong highway and you’re going to get caught up in a real mess. Try taking a
different way.”
And yet, I have friends whom I know are headed down the
wrong highway. I wonder, have I warned them? Have I spoken these exact words
into their lives? Have I lived in such a way that my life speaks to them of an
alternative route?
The last hour. It’s haunting. It’s dangerous. It’s tiring.
And it’s the most important hour of the trip.
