When it comes to taking a road trip, I am completely reliant on the navigation on my phone to get me where I want to be. I just came back from visiting my best friend from college and needed my trusty phone to lead the way. A little while into my drive, I began to realize that it was not taking me the way I thought I should go. I opened the app to check the directions. It didn’t have me getting on the interstate at all. Doubt in my pocket navigator immediately filled my mind. Surely this was not the best way. It was probably going to take forever to get home now. Did I mention that I was making this trip with my sweet, teething baby? Doesn’t this thing know the shortest distance between two points is a straight line? Not a squiggly, winding line through the mountains?
Then I looked around me, and it was beautiful. I drove through wide mountain skylines, trees aflame with the colors of fall, winding streams, old red barns, little white churches.
So much better than driving on boring I-75. Nora and I had an impromptu date at an apple orchard we passed.
I am not certain that the route I took was shorter, but who cares! This life moves fast enough as it is. Days spin into years faster than we can keep up with. Our hours are filled with busyness. We have to fight to savor the sweet moments.
It is in that fight that I find myself lately. I have challenged myself to list my gifts daily (as inspired by Ann Voskamp). It can be a tedious discipline, that I often fail at. Yet, when I put pen to paper over and over, my outlook changes. Everything changes. Gratitude changes everything.