My son and his girlfriend are driving to Utah. She has an internship there and he is keeping her company on the trek. Then he will fly home in time for junior year of college.
One of the perks of paying for his cell phone is that I can text him. Often. Each day I have inquired as to their progress, and been reassured that he
is well. Zack is thoughtful enough to wait until after the shredded tire has been resolved, or the sickness waned to offer up those particulars. Twice he has placated my maternal concern with a pin. A little round red dot on the text tells me precisely where they are on the map. I like that. The road has a direction, the town a name. He is somewhere I could potentially find should calamity strike in the night.
When my children were small I always knew where
they were. All I had to do was look down at my arms, or my legs. They were as close as they could be without climbing inside my clothes. But as time has gone on the umbilical cord has stretched and snapped. Most of the time I have no idea where they are. My firstborn sends me updates about his Tripit Networks, which are far flung and frequent. In one week for work this fall he will go to Atlanta, New York and Hawaii. But in between all I know is that he is in California. You know, the one
with the fault lines, and the drought, and the raging forest fires.
I can be calm about the reality that Zack is not yet in Utah, because I can see from the pin that he is on his way. He did deviate from a straight line between here and there to visit his brother in Missouri, but that was worth it.
My marriage is on a journey. While I can be impatient that we have not Arrived at Bliss, God gives me the occasional pin. The final
meeting of our last marriage group was one. It dropped near the end of a chaotic Thursday, and showed me that we are indeed on the map. The topic that night was Where are You Headed? and the conversation helped me find my bearings. We are not at our destination now, and we were not there then. But we are headed in the right direction.
