the long journey

I will be the first to admit that January does not provide ideal conditions for moving.  It was not fun for a worrier such as myself to see my dad, brother and good friend hauling my stuff down snow-covered stairs during the Big Upheaval.  The wet floor didn’t bother me, but the possibility of someone slipping on said floor had me in an angst.  I guess it didn’t really hit me until it was too late to make other arrangements, but January is not a great time to move across town.  And neither is it the best of times to move across four states.

I had just survived another band of snowfall along the Ohio Turnpike last Friday, when I stopped at Starbucks to calm my rattled nerves.  The sometimes slick roads and my overloaded car did not get along well.  “Ok, whose crazy idea was it to move in the middle of January?” I asked myself.  “Oh right… It’s all part of God’s Plan W3X.”

I held my latte and stared at the blowing snow outside.  Conditions hadn’t deteriorated to a point where pulling over and waiting might be required, but they did get rather intense here and there.  The journey was getting treacherous and I had to keep reminding myself to trust in God’s incredible sense of timing.  After all, he’s the one who came up with Plan W3X and its frigid timeframe.

I continued on my way and made it to New Jersey (obviously) in one piece.  But I was not without my moments of doubt and worry.  I had a mini-breakdown toward the end of Pennsylvania (me, not the car).  Through tears and sobs, I told God exactly what I thought about January’s moving challenges.  And I cried tears of joy when I got off at my exit in Jersey.   “I really do trust your sense of timing,” I told the Lord when I finally crawled into bed after the long journey, “even if I don’t agree that mid-January was an ideal time to move.”