Last week my car tires burned up only a couple thousand miles as my mom, my younger sister, and I cut a great big loop through the western landscape. I had been working at a camp in Missouri for a month and picked my family up in Oklahoma.

It was a lot of driving. But staring at those yellow stripes skipping along the blacktop for hours on end has its advantages.

"Really?" you ask.

Yes. Yes, it does. Not only does that road carry you to incredible places and people, driving it at 75 miles an hour gives you time to think.

And think I have.

Maybe you have to step back or step out from the place and the people that shaped you to fully understand yourself and them. 'Context is key!' as my teachers used to say with a waving finger in the air (not really). And when you leave Alabama at the slower pace of a car for a week, comparisons and questions slowly bubble up to the surface. Change is good. It's healthy. And it's ever so easy to get stuck in stagnation if you never move, never think about your present circumstance.

Day-to-day hustle and bustle don't leave a big gap for regular contemplation and question time. We are shoved along in the great traffic jam of society without much thought to where we are going or why. Technology has swallowed even more of our time. If we don't step back from it all and escape from the great noise of the highway of culture, how can we hope to make good life decisions and evaluations? And it's not just the future that time on the road will clarify, it's the past as well.

Driving is a time for the 'why' questions. Why do I act the way I do? Why do I hold this opinion? Why did my childhood spit me out like this? Why does this make me angry? Why do I like this thing? Why do I spend my time the way I do? Why is culture the way it is and why is it good or bad? or Why did I want to drive this freaking long way?

Less intellectual questions like how, what, and where are acceptable too, of course.

Time and life in general almost seem to pause and wait for some explanation, some justification, when you leave the places you know.

So, I know you've been waiting in breathless anticipation: what did I learn?

Well, somewhere across those endless-to-the-eye plains, God showed me how I'd built too many fences in my heart. He showed me that I don't need so many fences and boxes and comfort zones because He's the good shepherd. And somewhere on those curvy mountains roads, the Holy Spirit convicted me of drawing too many straight lines, saying too many no's and creating my own personal prison. I'd shut myself off from adventure and freedom because of weak reasons like distrust, fear, and pride. While I drove on more roads than I can count, my poor car sputtering along, God showed me how I'd been picking my own way in life when He had something better. I'd been trying to make it on the road trip of life by myself, trying to use God as a tool and an emergency navigator when He should be my all.

I want to take His paths, drive his highways. My own only lead to nothingness. I'd quite botched the map of my heart with scribbles, stains, and tears in an attempt to control and attain MY life, this life that I'd really given to Him already. I still do these things right now, but His grace covers me in white. Oh, how can His love be so endless, so deep?!

"Oh, for grace to trust Him more!"

A lot of these thoughts came from reading a book called "Through Painted Deserts." I'm still not finished with it yet, but it's a good one.

And there's something else. Camp taught me a lot, and I had time to reflect on that month of service and joy and friendship as I drove flat roads and ascending hills, as I listened to audiobooks or sat in silence or had conversations with family. Grace and friendship have been turning over and over in my mind. I want to really love the people that I meet and know. I want to serve them, to truly seek to understand them and reflect Christ to them, instead of worrying too much about what they think or what I want from them.

Too often I bumper-car my way through conversations, nodding my way through the words of a friend until I can say my piece. What a bruising, breaking way to live.

I'm so sorry. So desperately did I want to be understood that I didn't take the time to understand others.

With each hour I live, I become more aware of my need of grace and how amazing God's lavish grace is. How can I not extend this grace to others, this rain that waters me?

For so long I have lived in the rays of God's grace, gray and graceless myself. I am, we all are, the forgiven beggar demanding debts be paid.

And still the light of the Son shines down, thawing a hard heart He does not need, but which He loves and will love for all time.

All this mention of time makes me want to talk about it briefly. Our routine sucks us in, and we get into the sad habit of burning time like our salaries. Too many hours window-shopping or scrolling down Instagram, too many minutes lost to Netflix or even sleep. Thinking and mulling through the memory cabinet helped me realize how fast life flies, how I must see it as sacred, to be used for God and not for myself.

Another thing. Driving gives you a different sort of perspective, mentally, but physically too. America is one heck of a big place. We might forget this reality or take it for granted with our cell phones, news channels, and jet planes. Just driving halfway across this chunk of land has given me a great appreciation for those that came before, for those who blazed the trail, and for that great mixing pot of people spread across it. America is a vast place with a vast variety of people. Oh for grace to love them all. There is a whole different and beautiful connotation and understanding when I hear the word 'America' now.

I gained another perspective on the road, a peace. Out in the mountains or on plains running toward sunsets, the rush of life and the frantic panic of culture grow dim and quiet. I haven't read or watched the news in a month, headlines shouting and heads bobbing. And I'm better than ever. In this silence, the beautiful and important things of life twinkle like stars on a midnight canvas. The demands of school and society took a backseat, and the eternal came to dwell. Yes, time is rushing by like white lightning, but there are certain thoughts, certain relationships, and certain roads that pull you out of the current and onto a great green hill where you might catch the glimmer of eternity among the constellations. We are not temporal beings, but eternal. The thing that came most to the forefront of that car, of my mind, was my relationship with Jesus Christ. Nothing could be more important than what I too often shelve and skip come early mornings at school.

I know I've probably rambled down your screen something terrible, and my metaphor has most likely grown old and irksome. But I'm trying to say that this trip changed me for the best, and maybe it could change you too if you threw caution, threw money, to the wind, and drove into the wide open blue. Step into 'the road that goes ever on and on,' like Bilbo, like Frodo. We may be small and frail for great adventures. But that's okay, for we are not the 'captains of our own fates', not the 'masters of our lives', as the saying goes.

A better answer is murmured from the pages of scripture and has pounded through the passages of my heart this last month.

"He must increase, and I must decrease." (John 3:30)

Maybe you could lose yourself on that flowing highway and find your Maker and the meaning of it all, like Donald Miller did in the book I mentioned earlier. This trip has reminded me of a great truth spoken pages ago in the book of years. I may seek adventures, may plan trips and visit places, but nothing in this line of time compares to the adventure of a relationship with Jesus Christ.

"To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement." — St. Augustine