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The other day I was in Athens, Ohio hanging out with my friends at Good Works ministry--a dynamite ministry to the homeless I might add--when I got a phone call from my wife telling me that we got an offer on our house and that we had to sign the papers the next day. The only dimmer on the that was it was 9:00 p.m. and I knew that it would take at least 10 hours drive home. With little time to think, I packed my stuff and headed back. I drove till about 2:30 a.m. and found a Super 8 just outside of Indianapolis. I briefly considered driving all the way through but I remembered a sermon by Pastor Shawn Craig where he mentioned some terrible statistic about the likelihood of an accident if you're driving past 1:00 in the morning--the idea being don't drive when you're tired.
The next day I got up--after about 4 hours of sleep--and started driving back. Everything was going well till about 10:00 a.m. I was in McDonalds having breakfast when the windows of heaven started pouring down. It rained and it rained and it rained. Then the lights went completely out. I saw a guy standing around that looked like he knew something that I didn't, so I asked if he knew when the storm was going to let up. He proceeded to tell me the bad news that Hwy 70 was closed down about 20 miles south of where I was and the traffic was backed up for miles. He got out his atlas and we worked out an alternative route.
Sure enough, he was right. I decided to exit before the area where I knew there would be a lot of traffic and decided to fuel up. I also had to go to the bathroom, but, unfortunately the bathroom was out of order--and that was the only bathroom around for miles. I had a choice to make at that moment. I could either lose my dignity and go in a bush at the corner of the lawn attached to the station, which was behind the fence of someone's house, or I could get back on the road and wait about two hours in the traffic. Like any man would do, I chose option one and silently thanked God that he didn't create me a woman.
Once I finally got to the exit for the alternative route, I pulled over to another gas station only to find out that the road I was traveling on was also closed down further down the way due to an overturned truck. This time, I had to drive about 18 miles to another highway that was supposed to get me back on 70 going west. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the entire area was declared a disaster area due to flooding--which would explain the 3 hours of traffic. To make matters worse, after spending another two hours in agony, I pulled over to a Casey's gas station only to find out that the entire station was temporarily closed down.
I seriously didn't think I was going to make it back home that day, but thank God I did. The trip took twice as long as it should have, but I made it back just in the nick of time to sign the papers to close deal.
I'm not sure if there's a spiritual lesson to be drawn from this, other than the fact that sometimes you just have to persevere to get to your destination.
Keep running the race!
Aaron
