Digging Up Bones at the Truck Stop

I was one of the last to leave church yesterday as I encouraged a girlfriend. She was explaining a season that she is in and how the unknown is scary. As I tried to share my wisdom without assuming the experiences were exactly the same, I spoke something out loud that I have never said. I told her, "If I had written this season of my story, I wouldn't have written it this well." I thought a lot about that statement yesterday. I thought about how I would have written about a single mom who ran out of chances. It would have been much more boring than what I am living today.

My story popped up again in the afternoon as we met with the project manager for our books. She is amazing, gifted, talented and has a huge heart. She has read the parts of my manuscript that I have so far. With sincere eyes and a bit of a smile, she informed me that I had given her some good bones to my story. She told me I now need to add to the bones. She explained that I need to take my life outline and add feelings, emotions, smells, surroundings and to basically describe things to a point that make my readers feel they are right in the moment with me. Funny that for the last several years my prayers have been for me to forget a lot of things and last night as I laid in bed, I prayed to remember. I prayed to remember without it affecting me or my marriage. I prayed to remember details simply so I could help others. My stomach felt a little sick at some of the scenes that immediately began to flash in my thoughts. Some of the ones I do still remember but I was trying to relive in my mind with attention to more detail. That is when I thought again about the truck stop.

I remember that it was a cold night and I had to leave the car running to stay warm. I wondered if the battery and gas in the car would outlast my heartache recovery. I don't remember the fight. I don't remember the topic. I remember the feelings of inadequacy and failure. I do remember a strong desperation to find a place to run to where no one could see the real mess I was in. I had several special friends that made it known I could come to their home at any time and I had. They had seen my junk more than anybody, but that night I wondered how many times was too many. How many times did they have to listen to the same stuff over and over again? I was embarrassed and tired. Everything I had been taught by my parents went out the window that night. Don't be out late at night by yourself. Don't go to strange places and don't sleep in your car. I think that last one came up while discussing long travel safety at some point. I dismissed it all for two reasons. One, the truck stop was right down the road from where we were living at the time and two, I decided it was better to not expose everything my ex-husband did in the event God performed that miracle I was praying for. I wanted people to see the good God was going to bring out of this.

As minutes crept by and the radio played every wrong song for the moment I was in, I remember the windows. The temperature outside and inside the car caused the windows to fog up. I would try to wipe away a clear spot to keep an eye on my surroundings but the cloudiness would soon come back. It seemed very symbolic of my life. There were things that kept getting in the way of my dreams and how I had pictured things. The dream details kept fading and the more I tried to wipe a clean spot and focus on the sweet parts of the dreams I hoped were coming, the more my heart was giving up.

There were moments I thought I could buy some time by going inside the truck stop but I somehow felt safer and less desperate if I just stayed in the parking lot. I was parked directly under the large neon sign and I found myself trying to forget that I was in my own home town. I didn't want anything at all including my foggy windows to draw attention to myself. I wanted to hide in the dark of the night just for a little while so I could pray myself back to strength to go home again. I remember finally driving home and wondering if there ever was going to be a time that I would drive home for good. Or, was there going to be a time when I would be driving away for good? I prayed to have the strength to for whichever one was ahead.

So as I pray to remember and dig up much more than just the bones, I am praying that with every detail I remember, it represents a detail of someone else's life that could possibly be different. As I pray for the right words, I pray that the Holy Spirit will know better than me what words will wipe away guilt, loneliness, and denial for someone else. I pray that as I begin to tell a story with many layers of pain, someone else will get the courage to confide in someone in their life. In the end, my prayer is that people will see that among all the chapters of pain, disappointment and heartache, there is a God who loves and has a joyfully ever after for each of us!