It was late as I left my friend's apartment... filled. Filled with laughter, good food, new ideas, and thankfulness.
I scraped off my car in the silence of falling snow, a fresh inch or so covering my windows with white fluff. I was content. Content as I pulled my car into reverse and started what I expected to be a fifteen minute drive home.
Nope.
As my car careened between different tire tracks in the snow, trying to figure out which ones to follow, I pulled up to a stop sign where all I could see in the heavy snowfall was lights, glaring and flashing off of the sparkling snow. A tow truck loomed in the distance, a car just like mine stuck almost completely in a ditch, nose first, bottom seemingly levitating above the ground in a snowdrift.
I kept driving, listening for the scraping of ice under my tires, one hand ready to shift to an even lower gear in case I couldn't stop.
There was no traffic as I skidded through a red light.
I had made it through town practically crawling, probably irritating the drivers behind me. But there was no way I was risking a fishtailing, swerving, spinning out on this Friday night.
And that was the end to the "good" part of my drive.
The rest was a petrifying, white knuckle driving experience (had my knuckles been visible if I had not been wearing gloves). The snow was heavy, thick, and distracting as it pelted down on my windshield, distracting me from what was important: the curving road ahead. The cars behind me blinded me with their lights, while ahead was inky blackness. For miles I guessed where the road was and where the ditch was, frequently finding myself in the middle of the road since I was worried about spinning into the ditch.
To make matters worse, I had spotted an increasing number of deer carcasses on the road the past few days... as if I needed that to add to this mess of zero visibility.
I realized I was almost holding my breath, a sour taste enveloping my tongue as adrenaline flooded my veins. A large animal seemed to emerge from the side of the road. Or was it the splotchy vision in between thick flakes of falling snow, or the dark spots after being blinded by the pushy vehicle behind me?
I was muttering, praying, squinting, and nearly crying the whole way home.
Forty terrifying minutes later, I reached the safety of my driveway, the comforting slope into the parking spot just in front of my front door. I turned off my car. And just sat. Shaking. But even more filled with gratitude than when I had left.
As I reflected on that terrifying drive, I recalled how I had expected it to take just fifteen minutes. Twenty if I was being generous. Funny how my plans... for driving, or for my life, are rarely how I expect them to be. Five year plans? Yeah right.
Driving through those petrifying moments where I knew nothing but the distracting snow made it so hard to focus on what really mattered: the road. If I got too distracted by the billowing, blowing white, I would lose track of the road and surely end in the ditch. Focus focus focus. Turn off the brights. There's no point seeing so far down the road; only the falling snow is intensified.
So often I get caught up in my frustration of not being able to see the coming bends in the road: of what's next for me, for my future, where my life is headed... I want to turn on the brights and see everything laid out. But then I realize that the more I try to look beyond where I am, the more lost I become, the more impassable my current problems are, and the more hopeless the situation seems. My fears distract me, my worries, my doubts. When I focus on them, I see nothing. I see neither them in their true light, nor the road ahead. Once I turn off the brights and begin to focus on right where I am NOW, suddenly the distractions diminish, and I know to do the next thing. Keep driving: another yard, another foot, another inch. Or keep moving: another day, another minute, another second. In this moment, where do I need to be? What do I need to say? What do I need to do?
These forty minutes of terror taught me some new things about living in the moment -- about living in the present. Ironically, it was because I was terrified of losing all my future moments in that single drive home, and because I realized the intensity of the moment.
Every moment matters.
Living with intentionality matters.
What is the next thing? What will I do in this moment?
