Marriage is a journey. There is no innovation in pointing that out. But the four words fall vastly short of the experience of an actual trek of two thousand miles.

Near the start of our pilgrimage back from Missouri the clouds opened up and exerted their power. John is usually a seventy-miles-per-hour kind of guy but with the deluge he slowed to thirty five with his hazards on. I cannot articulate why driving in driving rain scares me, but I sat in the back seat with a heart rate well above the June temperature. Maybe it unlocks the pain of my mother's condo being flooded out... twice... but my ample imagination ziplines to worst case scenarios involving hydroplaning. 

It did not help that there was a flapping noise on the front passenger side, which John and Hosanna investigated while I stayed dry and worried. As chance would have it we had a roll of duct tape aboard for securing the GPS to the dashboard which worked, well, like duct tape, to hold the flapping plastic part of the bumper away from the tire. Problem solved. Torrent continues.

When we were on our way again my daughter noticed that I was crying, and looking a lot like a mother expecting to spend the afternoon in the ER. 

"Mom, want to listen to music?" she offered. I nodded. She hooked up an Ipad and handed me ear plugs which I promptly put in the wrong ears. "Switch em," she said as she clicked a few buttonless buttons. My daughter in law's voice came through the wires like a cool breeze. 

Pieces of the sky. Maybe this rain was less of a threat and more of a blessing. Certainly my daughter in law, who is from California, would jump at a chance to collect rainwater in a barrel and cart it home to her parched state.

The singing calmed me, and in less than thirty miles the storm had subsided. The car was humming along, even as its odometer lapped the heels of six digits, and I began to believe that we would sleep on our own beds instead of hospital gurneys. 

The last hour of driving fell to me. Hosanna was weary after an eight hour stint, and John had done his share, so I took the front seat. John set me up to listen to Gabriel's Oboe, and the blue sky did a spectacular job of showing off. 

The clouds, the music, the road as straight and true as a runway, all felt like a climax. The tears came afresh, but this time from joy. 

I have heard that our time on earth is an invitation to walk each other home. As I pressed my bare foot on the accelerator, glancing over my shoulder at the six sleeping and slumping bodies of irreplaceable and precious people, I realized what a gift I had been offered. 

I was driving them home.