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“Isn’t that where we used to turn?” Maile asked.

We were too late – the sun had already set in Orange Park, Florida. Still, we followed dark roads through the vaguely familiar neighborhood.

“I think that’s the road,” Maile would say, or, “Wait, that looks familiar.”

Then, as if emerging from a dream, clarity. Turn right at the stop sign. Straight through the next intersection. Then finally left on to Papaya Drive.

Even without the sun, the sky maintained some kind of cobalt blue against which the inky outlines of palm trees made everything feel very foreign, very faraway, and very long ago. I stopped the van and put it in park. Maile and I stared across the street at the single story house.

Eleven years had passed, but nothing had changed. Oh, maybe a tree was missing from the front yard. Maybe the grass looked better cared for. I doubt they had an anemic vegetable garden behind the house.

Memories popped into my mind like Polaroids. Pulling up all the carpet in the living room during our first day there and then sleeping on the rolls of old carpet that night. Me coming home from a long week on the road to find light peeking around the edges of the curtains, knowing the person who loves me most on this earth sat inside that house. Bringing home a little puppy that totally cramped our style but to whom we could not say “no” at the pet store.

And they just kept flashing through my mind, these instants.

* * * * *

But sitting there in the minivan, with four kids crying or laughing or arguing in the back seats, it felt like maybe all that stuff never happened. And if it did happen, it was so long ago – maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe all those memories would eventually just evaporate from my brain, and then from Maile’s brain, and then all would be forgotten.

Then Maile reached over and grabbed my hand.

“It’s been a crazy 12 ½ years,” she said, and I knew exactly what she meant. And suddenly it did matter, every little moment, even the ones I’ve already forgotten, because all of those moments are what brought us to that moment, parked in the dark in a minivan with our four audacious children having their own Barnum and Bailey’s three-ring circus in the back seat.

So we just sat there, our headlights shining down that old familiar road, and we stared at that house the way you stare at an old friend when you pass them at the county fair, and then you walk on without saying anything because words would only ruin the ground around the memorials of those good times.

Some things are best left in the very long ago.

Saturday morning. I sat down in Willie’s huge driver’s seat and took a deep breath. We had about three hours to our next destination, Orange Park, Florida, and all the little zoo animals (aka children) were fed, watered, and ready to go. We had spent the night at a truck stop and were parked between two huge 18-wheelers. It was actually kind of a cozy spot.

The storms that went on to wreak so much havoc later in the day were passing through – the hurricanes stayed to the north of us, but heavy bands of rain pounded the roof and windows of the bus.

I turned the bus key to “on” and pushed the red button. Nothing. Uh-oh. This had happened once or twice before, and all I had to do was jump-start it with our van, but I did not want to go outside. I looked at all the buttons again, wondering if I had left something running overnight that drained the battery. I turned the key off and on again. Pushed the button. Not even a click.

Oh, man. The ran was pouring down in sheets. I couldn’t find my raincoat, so I put on a heavy, corduroy number created more for cold, dry, Pennsylvania winters than for warm, humid, tropical storm-like conditions. I put on a baseball cap. I tried to put on a good attitude.

Fortunately the jumper cables reached from the mini-van we are towing to the bus battery. I did all the hooking up, turned on the van, went back into the bus, and turned it on. Pushed the button. Nothing.

I went back outside and did what my driver’s ed teacher told us never to do: I banged the live ends of the jumper cables together to see if I had a spark. Nothing. What is going on? I’ll tell you what was going on – I was getting more and more wet. Soaked. I went back in to the bus to try one more time. That’s when I noticed something.

The bus was still in drive.

So the night before I must have parked, turned off the bus, and put on the parking brake. But I never put it back into neutral (there is no “park”).

I smiled to myself. Really, I did, right there on the over-sized driver’s seat with water dripping from the bill of my baseball cap, right there with my fake wool coat that weighed as much as an entire sheep. And this question entered my mind, right there at a truck stop in South Carolina.

How often is my life in drive when it should be in neutral?

I know, I know. All the big life gurus talk about how important drive is, how indispensable the go-get-’em disposition. And of course there is always a time for that dogged determination to make something happen.

But sometimes I feel like that’s all I’m ever doing. Drive, drive, drive. Push for this book deal, make another call about that project, write, write, write. Then I wonder why things don’t start up the way I want them to. I wonder why nothing happens, no matter how many ways I try to jump-start an idea, or a business plan, or a direction in life.

Maybe I just need to put things back in neutral.

What do you think it looks like to occasionally put your life in neutral?

Today around 10:30 we’ll be hitting the road. It’s been a nice layover here in Charlotte, but it’s time to shake the dust off. Due to a few changes on one of the projects that I’m working on, we’ve decided we need to get to Sarasota earlier than originally planned, so we’re going to have to skip Savannah this time around.

Next stop: Jacksonville, FL. So far we’ve traveled about 1000 miles, and from here to Jacksonville it’s 400 miles, so we’ve got some ground to cover in the next day or two. Thankfully I’ve just purchased a 41 song album compiling all of Willie Nelson’s greatest hits (don’t tell Maile): “The Essential Willie Nelson.” We’ve gone way too far in this journey, in his bus, not to pay homage to Willie.

By the way, there’s a little gold plaque under the speedometer, just behind the steering wheel, with this inscription in black:

“This dog will hunt.”

Makes me smile every time I see it.

(I’ll post a picture of it on my Facebook writer’s page at some point. Become a fan by “Liking” my page, and you should be able to see it HERE later today.)

Anyway, enjoy your weekend! And pray for Tamara Out Loud, since our family will be descending on her family’s residence sometime Sunday night or Monday morning!

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered” – GK Chesterton.

“A ship in harbor is safe – but that is not what ships are for.”  John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic

There is something about this adventure that is exposing parts of me I never even knew existed. There is something about removing life’s small conveniences that has stripped me of my power to subdue the darker parts of myself, while simultaneously revealing to me all the potential this life has to offer.

Why this? Why now? Frustrations with my children reach higher levels than before, yet five minutes later I find myself filled with such compassion for them, and love, and tenderness, that I’m not sure what to do about it. One moment I find myself wondering how I will make it through another 14 weeks on the road – the next moment I cannot comprehend living in one place for an extended period of time, ever again.

Don’t worry – I’m not losing my mind. I don’t think so, anyway. But I am losing something. Perhaps by heading out on an adventure such as this, freeing myself from so many of the normal constraints, a truer sort of me is coming out. That’s what it feels like anyway. Remember that part in Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Aslan confronts Eustace (who has been turned into a dragon after sleeping on dragon treasure) and gently but painfully removes his skin? Here it is

Then the lion said – but I don’t know if it spoke – You will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

The very first tear he made was so deep and I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know – if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.

I’m willing now, perhaps more so than at any other point in my life, to have my calloused skin torn off. This trip has positioned me for just such a hide removal. And even though it hurts, I’m excited to see what kind of person will emerge.

What events in your life have torn off your outer hide? What were the positive things that emerged from the pain?

Writers often appear to be loners. I spend countless hours in front of my computer screen, trying to craft images and tell stories, most of the time by myself. But I also rely more and more on the help of others to bring my projects to fruition. Here are just a few folks I want to thank:

Jason McCarty, from Simple Blog Designs, gave my blog a makeover this past weekend. I’m really happy with the new look. If you’re looking for someone who can redesign your blog for a reasonable price, check out his website (which includes samples of his work) HERE.

Chad Thomas Johnston is one of the most creative people I know: writer, musician, graphic arts extraordinaire. He put together what I think is a great cover for my upcoming e-book, Building a Life Out of Words. I can’t wait to tell you more about this book in the coming weeks, but for now all I can say is that it should be available by the end of March. If you are looking for someone to design a quality, creative book cover for you, check out his page HERE. This is the cover he made for me, putting together most of the elements by hand. You can read about how he made it HERE:

Andi and her dad Woody made us feel like family during our stop in Bremo Bluff. If you get a chance, read Maile’s Thank You note to them over at her blog, and then check out the wonderful and important book project that Andi is working on.

So many of you have made the first two weeks of our trip possible: Pastor Gerry let us park in his church parking lot in Gettysburg, PA; the Fedicks let us get stuck in their ditch in Waterford, VA; the Kurtz’s opened up the gym of their kids’ private school in Harrisonburg, VA, so that our kids could run around and be crazy for a few hours; Maile’s brother Matt arranged for us to park Willie at the Y in Boiling Springs, NC; Maile’s mom found a spot for us to park Willie at the local fire station in Gastonia, NC (undoubtedly she bribed them with chocolate chip cookies). Then there were the Landis’s, the Pingry’s, and the Jackmore’s who hosted us and fed us and let us use their showers.

Later this week we head further south. For now, we’re all catching our breath and enjoying unlimited showers and unquestioned bathroom breaks (“Seriously? You have to go again? What?! Number two?!”).

Thanks for sticking with us during the first one-eighth of our journey! We appreciate all of you who are helping make arrangements or simply following along.

When I was a kid, I made a small boat out of scrap wood, twigs, and any kind of nails I could find. It resembled a floating bird’s nest more than any kind of seafaring vessel.

Then I sat down at the kitchen table in our small farmhouse and I wrote a note about God, why he was generally a very nice person and someone you could trust. I doubt the note made much sense. But my theology then was probably far more accurate than it is today, now that my views have been clouded by pain and injustice, hypocrisy and inexplicable tragedy.

There was something easy and straightforward about God then, so much so that I could sum it all up in a one-page letter which I eventually taped to the bird’s-nest vessel I had created. I walked to the creek, gingerly carrying that purveyor of truth. I leaned out over the bank, just beyond the small dam the neighbor boy and I had built with rocks and chunks of earth, and I released the boat into the water.

I sat on the bank and watched it bob up and down on the glaring waves. I flipped over a rock or two, hoping to find a crayfish, but then I remembered I hadn’t brought anything in which to put them.

* * * * *

I think we’re all like that when we talk about God. We have our own little messages that we wrap around our own imperfect vessels and then we tape them to keep out the water. We rarely look upstream to see what messages are being sent to us; no, we sit on the bank and watch our own well-sealed words drift and pitch with the waves and the current.

And while God could have been found in the letter that young boy wrote, he also could have been found in the trees leaning over the creek or the clouds drifting in the mirror alongside the boat. He could have been found in the fishing hole or the open field. He could have been found in the care the young boy took to build the boat, or the random way the waves directed the small craft around the bend.

There are the written, deliberate messages. But there is also so much more.