Ridin' Shotgun

Needing diesel fuel, our only choice was to pull into a truck stop where the snow was so deep, it pulled one of the front wheels of the car we were towing right off the dolly.

It was around midnight, and the trucks were big — a lot bigger than us. Randy laid on his back in the foot deep slush; the kind of slush that sinks into your shoes and slowly creeps up the bottom of your jeans, kind-of translucent from tires sloshing through it. The type of slush that seems to seep into your body and doesn’t leave until you soak in a hot bathtub. Your feet are so cold they go numb, but actually feel hot and tingly.

I bent over holding the flashlight so he could sort-of see what he was doing, but it was so windy and blustery that my hands were shaking as I gripped the heavy, metal Mag-light. The sleet slapped our faces and I watched my husband shiver while his muscles tensed up trying to right the wheels. No one seemed to notice. And no one seemed to care. And then it hit me.

We were alone.

We put our kids in this rig we now called home and we were alone. Of course, we weren’t, but it sure felt like it.

And I didn’t like it. I began to sniffle. The tears mixed with sleet, added to the numbness of my frozen face. That’s when I realized I wasn’t as organized as I thought and should have left out a couple of those jackets for all seasons. Instantly, I wanted to go home.

“I...I...d-d-d-on’t like it anym-m-m-ore...I want to go h-h-home. C-c-c-can we go home?” My words were muffled by the roaring of the nearby truck engines.

Somehow, in that moment, I forgot we no longer had a home to go home to. I was standing outside of my house (regardless of where it was parked), but I was beat and shivering and miserable and I wanted something else. Instantly, I wanted anything else.

The first night, I wanted to turn back. I wanted a shingled roof. I wanted the wind to stop, the sleet to end and I didn’t want to be cold, wet and scared. It was the first night — the first obstacle and I crumbled. I couldn’t see past a tiny, little snafu. The first one, only one so far, and I was done — I had enough. If I could have, I would have headed in the opposite direction.

Instead, we went to bed. We turned off the engine and stayed right there in that truck stop. That was the first of many nights we would sleep in a truck stop and eventually the sound of idling diesel engines would be a numbing sleep track for me. But not that night. That very first night, every sound those trucks made sounded foreign to me. And it seemed like they were mocking me.

You’re in our territory now and we own this road. You’re just a tiny RV reserved for retired couples twice your age who drive to Florida or Arizona and park in campgrounds to escape this kind of weather, and here you are in the middle of it and you don’t even know what you’re doing. You are clueless. You’re alone and helpless. You don’t know how to live in an RV and besides, you are terrible at geography. You never were any good at it and now you travel full time…. ha ha ha…. you’ll never make it… you will fail at this…. and then where will you be? You won’t even know… because you are so bad at geography.

And that’s when I recognized that voice. It was my enemy. With that last comment about geography, he took it too far. It was too personal. That heartless, intentionally cruel enemy kicking me on the first night. He came out of the gates swinging at my head and my heart. He wanted to scare me to death on that first night — to set a precedent he could use to derail me on this journey. And he would use anything; a storm, a car slipping off the dolly, a truck engine, a “C” in high school geography — anything. He didn’t care — he doesn’t care. Why would he? He’s the enemy of everything resembling anything good and despises everyone made in God’s image. He hates me.

I tucked the kids into their bunks long past their bedtimes (the first night of many with no reasonable bedtime), grabbed a pair of sweat pants and the thickest sweatshirt I could find and fell into bed. I had no stamina whatsoever. No ambition to go anywhere but the familiar. And I had no problem admitting it. Forget all the prayer and planning: I was scared and weak, emotional and exhausted, overwhelmed and untrusting.

I told Randy I felt like crying, not sniffling, but crying.

“Babe, just go to sleep — it’ll look better in the morning,” Randy said.

He was right. Eight hours later, I was a different girl.

The morning had come. My morning had come.

I often go back to that night. Freezing cold, alone, responsible for two kids, little money, new to the RV; it was overwhelming and fantastic all at the same time. I learned something really valuable that night. Sleep is from God. He blessed me with deep rest. Sleep didn’t change my situation, because in the morning, we still had to deal with the car, the dolly and the snow. But it did change my perspective. A mind always works better with rest. Looking back, it was hardly a life or death situation. But that night, I felt all alone. I wasn't, but it genuinely felt like it.