He and I, we tend to make best memories down dirt roads.

No surprise to the people who know us and love us and have seen us then and see us now and have walked with us in times between.  The ones who have been with us this long-lovely-hard-wonderful-up and down-growing up living- it- out time.

They know our heart for the woods, the way we burst-joy over catching the first Spring-fresh trout of the season, how we start pacing the floor when the air itches cool and November deer are moving, how nothing feels so good to us as a sweet summer August night under a moonlit sky when I can hold his hand and laugh too loud.

I love to throw my bare feet up on the dash; to the expected roll of his eyes and roll down all the windows despite the dust.

I love a perfect date night riding the roads to nowhere of vintage George Strait mixed with a little Marshall Tucker Band and two fishing poles right before dusk when blackflies and peace are equally fierce.

I love how sometimes a road impassable the year before opens up and beckons new adventures…

and how sometimes the paths I have bumped over a million times thicken dense and close up tight, so I have no choice but to try some other road worn-traveled to others, but raw and untouched to me.

I love how life leads across a map of trails like these.

Sometimes I think I kind of know where they are going to end. The roads.

And sometimes I don’t know they are even going to. End.

But when I’m with him, it’s ok like that.

:::: When I’m with Him, it’s ok like that.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go…”  +Mark 9

And the roads……..

Some end at my favorite lake surrounded by sunset and some of my favorite people with laughter hanging on star-strings on a summer evening.

Some end with a meandering after a smooth tar beginning til they turn to spinning gravel and then to grass and then bounce and jostle slow til the path fades away into the silent woods like it never existed at all.

There’s those that just. End. Abrupt.

Some lead to some unexpected blessing, a road to things beautiful and enchanting, that I had never seen anything so feasting before, ending by a stream spilling refreshment and bubbles under the coolest shade of hemlocks with yellow shafts of sunlight shining and you know that somewhere, just somewhere there must be a fairy sitting on a pink lady slipper dripping with dew.

Some end up somewhere unexpected and jolting and I am not even sure how we arrived there.

But, it all…

it all…

Fills me, somehow.

…and the hungry soul He fills with good things… +Psalm 107

All the roads that lead to fulfilling that one thing, that one thing…

His purpose for us.

As I have planned, so it shall be, and as I have purposed, so it shall stand… +Isaiah 14

And I am content with that. I must be. Because I must trust Him down all of these roads.

And The Lord gave me this pretty amazing husband. The one made just for me. The one who leads me and accompanies me and guides me and walks beside me down every pathway. The one who rides all the roads with me.

The one who turns up the music and plows through the dirt and doesn’t mind the mud and keeps us moving and hunts for happy and discovers new paths and brings me along and clears the way when the brambles stick and holds my hand while he drives.

And that, by His grace…

we can trust Him down every way we walk.

Because He,

He

is walking with us.

I pray we remember that.

“Stand by the roads, and look,
    and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way is; and walk in it,
    and find rest for your souls…”

+Jeremiah 6