Answers...

As I made my lone trek down the highway my eyes became consumed with tears and my emotions consumed with fears.  My actions, they became engulfed by the totality of them both.  With complete concentration on an answer to my question posed, the pitter-pattering of raindrops across my windshield emitted the only sound.  They made themselves apparent as they scattered whichever direction after hitting the windshield in what seemed a random vector.  My vision turned to them and the question of "why?" now consumed my thoughts.  It seems the weight of the life altering, emotionally tearing and breaking news had found me...and I for one had no clue I was even lost.

 

With this epiphany I began counting backward from ten fully expecting and demanding and audible answer from God of my inquiry.  I mean, I felt I deserved one and I needed it to solidify my shaken faith.  I was not concerned with why the once united drops dispersed with a crash and trailed off in different directions, or why that car beside me sped up as if it were not raining at all.  No concern at all why that same car had just cut me off only to slam on brakes.  I was down to "5...4..." when I looked through my tears and HIS own that I received my answer.  It seems all things had its purpose and culminated in that one moment.  It was not what I was expecting at all.  The car slamming on brakes paused before switching lanes in front of me.  Its tag number prominently displaying a Bible verse to which I was not familiar.  I jotted it down while still listening in silence for my answer.  Then, as my countdown ended I found the entirety of my faith consumed within the scribbles of my pen.

 

Looking back at my actions, what nerve of me to demand an answer from my creator.  To put him on a clock in addition to demanding how it's served to me.  I was done.  My reservoir low and faith empty.  I guess my thinking was relational to my being a parent.  I thought about how we're to explain to our kids why they are being punished or tested as to make the experience profitable for them.  Surely God wanted this experience to be profitable to me!  Surely my world was being turned upside down for a reason.  You know, I didn't particularly care in which direction my future pointed me, I just needed to know that this all had a purpose and my way not lost.

 

Gripping this piece of paper in hand brought about even more demands.  "This had better not be some random message requiring me to understand Hebrew to decipher it, I said"  I wasn't going that far, I wasn't searching any further.  No parables or situational stories.  I needed straight talk real fast!  In eagerness and anger I found myself searching for a place to pull over not far from where I was.  It was no doubt a dangerous place to be but no more dangerous than where I was emotionally.  I grabbed my Bible from the back seat and found the scripture and read the answer to my question.  In red letters it said that He was teaching me how to love -nothing more, nothing less.  I was shaken and confused, pondering it's meaning.

 

In the year to follow I posted that scripture everywhere trying to figure out this love thing and what HE meant.  The words were plain enough, I was just a kid being taught a lesson about something I had not yet been entirely privy to.  Occasional glances brought about new meanings every day.  I mean I thought I had it down, knowing how to love, but little did I know how love could be to ME.  Looking back, I now see how nothing was random.  It was not random that things happened the way they did.  It was not random that I was on that rainy highway overwhelmed with tears, or that the pitter-patter of those raindrops caught my focus.  Even they had a purpose.  Once united, these drops dispersed upon impact multiplying into smaller droplets spreading out.  Well it seems I had experienced a windshield experience of my own and my brokenness spread out for the world to see.  With my eyes having had its tears wiped away and my emotions now consumed with joy, I wouldn't change my experiences for the world.  Hopefully I can have as much impact as those raindrops as I spread my life, gaining the attention of others to show how God can love you through the scribbles of my pen.