When my dad was 24 (?) years of age, he went on an epic road trip from northern Texas to Victoria, British Columbia, in Canada, with one of his best friends. He would talk about how and where they drove, and how they passed by Mount St. Helens, which had just blown its top a year or two earlier. (His friend wanted to go collect ash!) As I got older, I learned more layers to the story and the trip, not all of which were great, but I remember simply being captivated by the trip. I was counting the states they had to drive through just to get there and back: Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. I think they may have briefly driven through Montana on the way back. I say this, because my dad shared how, when [whatever trip he was on] he passed Butte, Montana, he described how the interstate was up high in the mountains, and the city of Butte was "way down there," and he could see it clearly!
As far back as middle school, I started dreaming up my own dreams for a nationwide road trip. I shared them with my best friend at the time, and he seemed interested. Discussions never progressed beyond a vague idea that we would "go coast to coast, and then back again 3 or 4 more times." (I forget how I described it to him, but I remember that my goal was to see as many places and things as possible. And of course have a camera to capture everything!)
By the time I was a senior in high school, I had scaled that vision down to a mere road trip to Houston to see baseball's All Star Game, which was playing in the Astros' baseball park that year. I decided to invite a few other friends, and even told them all about it. This was February of that year, I think. They all got back to me: they had asked their parents and the answer was "no." Each friends' parents had vetoed the idea. Even one or two of my friends didn't appear all that enthusiastic about the idea. Disappointed, the trip dream died. I did get to go to Houston about a week later than I had originally planned, but for an entirely different reason. No baseball game, though.
In 2009, I finally got to have a series of trips and visits over a three-week stretch that was just absolutely wonderful. But there was nothing "epic" about any of those trips; it was just that they were fun. And short.
Which leads to 2010, the year I finally got to have not only a trip similar to what my dad had at a similar age, but also something remotely close to the kind of trip I had dreamed 10 or more years earlier. The more *ahem* "experienced" with life I get (my sweetheart reminds me I'm still young, even when I talk about getting older), I begin to understand why many people in their 40s and 50s feel nostalgic for their 20s. To be fair, I'd rather be where I am now, having grown and learned the lessons I have, than go back to life in a younger body and not having grown and learned said lessons. 2010 is a year that seemingly everything happened, and I feel nostalgic for it, but I wouldn't ever go back there again.
But it's important to put this "epic" trip in perspective. 2010 was my first year at the Vineyard, my first year at a real church that I loved. I was home. I was no longer a spiritual nomad, which I had been for a number of years. I was getting plugged in to community, and even though I wasn't yet saved, I was hearing from the God of the Bible (albeit through other people, but still). I was not only learning Scripture, but I was also learning about things I was never taught growing up: healing prayer, spiritual warfare, just to name a couple.
In a nutshell, the "epic" trip consisted of me flying to Colorado to meet up with my childhood best friend (the same one that I had first dreamed up a "multiple times over" cross-country road trip with once we graduated high school), ride with him to California (he was beginning grad school out there), and help him get settled in. The rest of the trip gave me an opportunity to catch up with two other people living there. One of them was also another of my best friends. The other... well...
This is where a nominally awesome trip (a road trip through Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada, and California) became epic. It's also very important to note that, today, in 2021, I have one thing now that I so desperately yearned for back then, and took a lot of healing and growing for me to be able to receive this blessing in the right way.
Even though I didn't officially give my life to Christ until March 2013 (privately), and December 2013 (publicly, when I got baptized), God was already at work. I realize now, now that my faith is and has been in a decent-to-good place for a while, I really did want to follow and serve Jesus. I just didn't have the tools to be able to do it well. I had roadblocks that got in the way of my effectively being able to obey God and Scripture in certain ways. And one of the first things I realize God did for me was address my pattern of obsession. And on this trip, specifically, the first thing He did was to get this "other" person out of my life for good.
I still remember the two Scriptural passages I felt God using to speak to me at the time. The first was His reminder to me that He loved me so much that He did and was going to do whatever it took to pursue me for His purpose:
3 And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; 4 and perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. 6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
In the second Scriptural passage, I felt God use this to show me the first thing He was going to do to not only bring me to restoration, but also to blessing. But I felt Him warn me, this was going to be painful for a little while:
12 Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. 13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. 14 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. 15 Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death. 16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. 18 Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.
There were at the time two different women I had been friends with that I was still in touch with during this time. One I had just met that year, at the Vineyard. (In fact, the night before I left for Colorado, I had dinner at her apartment, just the two of us.) The other was in California, waiting for me to arrive five days later. I was most definitely an eligible bachelor at that time. But, I wasn't anywhere near ready for a relationship. Not only so, but my obsession for one, I now realize, was actually getting in the way of God being able to use me the way He wanted. I needed to know firstly that only God could love me in the best way possible, that no human ever could, and secondly that, due to my obsession habits, I repeatedly fell into temptation. While my own sins in this area didn't involve other people, they were still keeping me in this pattern.
So, why 11 years later am I finding myself reflecting on this? Primarily, it's due to the calendar. Due to a quirk that occasionally happens, this year is the first time we've had the same exact calendar as 2010. For example, I flew out to Denver on Monday, August 30th. This year, that date falls on a Monday for the first time since 2010. Tuesday will be August 31st. And so on. But the official "Memory Stone" date for me is Sunday, September 5th. The night before this date, I was reading through the above Scriptures and God was using them (as well as some circumstances that happened in the days leading up to it) to minister to me. And on Sunday, September 5th, I began to feel the full force of what God was doing to begin to cleanse me. That was the day I knew I had to say goodbye. I didn't yet know, that by doing so, some hellos would follow. After I returned to Chicago, I couldn't stop talking about this trip for months. It wasn't just some fulfillment of a road trip to places I'd never been before, although it was that also. It wasn't only what I like to call "the Kevin walk" through the heart of San Francisco (plus about 200 photos I took) with my other best buddy that lived out there. It was a divine experience -- through fire -- that led to more things God would do over the next decade, that would eventually, finally, get me to where I am now.
I wouldn't go back to 2010. Yes, I went on a lot more adventures then, and seemingly in some senses I didn't have a care in the world. But while a lot of good things happened, I was miserable most of the time. The version of myself then would've given anything to have what I have now. And, he did. He gave a decade of his life to shut all his ambitions down in order to focus on healing and growing up. And after hitting another extreme low at the end of 2019 after working and working on myself for what seemed like forever, at the beginning of 2020 God moved again. A new church, a new job, a new car... and a new sweetheart.
My sweetheart does remind me in some ways of each of the two women, particularly in terms of some of their personality quirks. 😊 Considering that my sweetheart and I were set up by a mutual contact, I can say that this was definitely God. He knows what I like 😉 But He also knows what it took for me to get to this point.
11 years later, as we go through the days, from Sunday, August 29th (as far as I'm concerned, this is really when the memories around this trip began) to Tuesday, September 7th, I won't be doing anything out of the ordinary to commemorate it. As for the "Memory Stone" date, Sunday, September 5th, this year, I'll be helping my dad clean and organize our living space and our storage space. But I'll get to spend time with my sweetheart here and there, and we will have dates and special times together. I will always remember this "epic" trip, but what I can do is take what God has impressed on me from this time, and with another year under my belt, apply it to where He has taken me to at this point in time.
