You Can't Get There From Here...

Today the girls were on a float in a parade for the Corn Fest here in Youngsville. They were in the Children's Summer Theater production of Jungle Book. Now, there were maybe twenty kids in the production, only six were on the float (Rachel actually ran beside the float carrying a sign - boy was she tired...). But this isn't about Corn Fest of Children's Theater. It's kind of about the parade, though I have a history with parades. This parade? I didn't get to see it. Here's the problem:

X is where I had to drop the kids off for their float

Z is where I had to pick them up after the parade

RED LINE is the parade route (which was completely shut down by the time I got out of the snarl of dropping the kids off - ten minutes later than they were supposed to be dropped off and they were the first and second kids there...).

Look carefully at the map. So, tell me, how do I get from X to Z? Heh, join the parade, right? Thought about it...

Here's how I ended up going - GPS tried putting me on some phantom roads (one was a driveway, one was just woods...).

Now, if I were more of a local I could probably have figured out a better route...but not much. Yeah, not only did I have to go through the hollows (Page Hollow and Abraham Hollow are roads back there, so, I guess I was in the hollows) but I had to go PAST Youngsville about 2.5 miles and turn around because they're working on the overpass just East of town - so I had to go to the Irvine exit to turn around...argh...

So I missed the girls in the parade. By the time I walked to the school (oh, yeah, um - ALL the streets to the school were blocked off - so I walked four or five blocks to get to the school - and Rachel wasn't exactly thrilled to walk that distance back after running most of the parade)...so, by the time I had walked to the school they had already been there about ten minutes...

Sigh... Sometimes you can't get there from here...

So I went on a journey - not one taken totally by choice, but one that circumstances forced on me. How much of life is like that? We plan to go from here to there - but it seems like you can't get there from here. When I went to the University of Rochester, at least half the people in my class that I knew well were pre med first semester freshman year. By the end of second semester, half of them were Psych or undeclared majors. What happened?

But it's not just stuff like hard classes that push us around. Unrealized expectations. Other people's expectations. Bitterness. Conflict. Loss of hope. Tragedy. All kind of stuff can get in the way of us getting to where we're going.

Sometimes, though, we just go the long way. I have been: dishwasher, cook, baker, construction laborer, handyman, UPS grunt (not very long), substitute rural route mail deliverer, English teacher/substitute teacher, Worship Leader, Youth Pastor, Senior Pastor. The journey from called teenager to Pastor was definitely the long way - but, for me, the right way. I am exactly where God wants me right now. But I think I was in all those other moments too (except maybe handyman...bad idea - oh and I hurt my back at UPS...bleah...).

So... What does all this mean? Dunno. Just didn't want to whine about driving all over without having SOME kind of a point to it all. But now I'm right back where I started... Guess you really can't get there from here...