The Car Rides Never Seem to End

No one tells you when you cradle your newborn that many hours of your life will be measured sitting in a car.  When your little one struggles to sleep at night, you drive in circles simply to settle a screaming child.  As he becomes school age, the hours you spend now bracket a school day.  Middle and high school bring after school sports practice and games.  Maybe your child is gifted in music and will travel with a team on Sundays.  Or drama is his bent and hours of practices leading up to production require hours more in the car.  

Then comes summer.  Camps provide a platform for a child to grow, take good chances, make good friends, and learn outside of your home.  Great stuff that requires, you guessed it, more hours in the car to get your child to and from camp.  

Don't you wish one could bottle up time earlier in life, but ineveitably we ignore hints to do so.  Somehow the moments creep up slowly and fly by quickly.  Grasping them becomes a virtual impossiblity.  

At this point in my life I have eight children, only one of whom has a license.  She is only home during the summer.  Four of my children require an additional six hours of my time weekly out of my home so that sibling visits can take place.  For a stay at home mom, I spend a great amount of time out of my home.  

So what?  God has chosen to lay that before me now.  I do not always enjoy it, honestly.  Often major tiffs occur (and not just with the kiddos).  My youngest has a penchant for swearing, which of course gets any mom's goat especially when she is driving.  

Yet, in the midst of all this driving I have seen rainbows, watched clouds loom on the horizon forboding storms, caught the sun as it peeked its way through,  laughed at turkeys crossing the road, listened to my little one ask Jesus to forgive her sin.  I have shared life lessons with my teens, wept in my heart for hurting children, prayed aloud for little ones who struggle.

I get to the end of many days physically exhausted and drained, tired of running, driving.  But, I have to remember that what drains from me can be poured into my kids.   These are days when God reminds me that he never stops for me either.  His plan is perfect eventhough it is not always fun.  His grace includes energy and allertness to buckle one more car seat, wait in one more parking lot, make one more trip to camp, and start it all over again tomorrow.