TAKING A TRIP THROUGH LIFE
.Any way you look at it, life is a trip! What journey’s have you made in life looking for happiness or peace? Heaven, Nirvana, your own Garden of Eden? A place of serenity and joy that always seems to be just ahead?
My first recorded voyage in life was headfirst down a birth canal into a world where everyone moved faster than my eyes could follow. I was going for a ride, but no one asked me where I wanted to go or how I would like to get there. My journey had just begun. (Photo by Bantersnaps on Unsplash)
After navigating that dark, scary tunnel with little understanding of what was happening I let out a cry. Joy or terror? I think it was relief.
Blinking in total nakedness at the bright lights and the sound of voices, I was not prepared for life to move at such a frantic pace. How does one travel in this new world I was thrust into?
I soon learned about forward motion. I may have been strapped to a backpack, tucked into a stroller, or straddling the wide hips of a mother who knew how to use her hands and feet in ways that I had yet to discover, but I moved.
It would be a few years before I could coordinate these parts they called legs, so I merrily went along with whatever method I could hitch.
THE DISCOVERY OF WHEELS
I remember my first real vehicle – a blue metal stroller, shaped somewhat like a peanut with a small wooden handle that I gripped to “steer” as I flew down the sidewalk with my mother trailing behind.
This was freedom in my tiny world, which had been confined to the limits of two chubby legs and a picket fence until now.
I was not concerned about the source of power for my ride, nor was I concerned about packing for the trip, or even where I was headed.
It was a time of perfect faith, a time of trust, and compared to the rebellion of later years, a time of obedience. (Photo by Huantao-Liu on Unsplash)
A VEHICLE UPGRADE
Although I loved that stroller and all the adventures we had together, I didn’t know what heaven ahead. Heaven is not a concept, but a felt experience of joy.
I wonder if I would ever have wanted to return to the confines of that first little peanut-shaped vehicle once I tasted freedom.
That freedom appeared as a shiny red Schwinn with fat tires and a bell by my right thumb. (Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash)
Not only could I journey farther, faster, and with pizzazz, I could choose where I wanted to go, taking either the flat paved way or the more thrilling hills and curves that offered excitement and challenge.
I came to understand that the power I needed for this adventure rested in my legs’ strength and the determination of my will.
With youthful enthusiasm, I knew no limits. Freedom at last. I was my own master. No longer did I go where another led, at a pace too slow for my racing spirit. Indeed THIS had to be heaven!
AND ADD A LITTLE POWER
For all the freedom the Schwinn gave me, it was not long before I began to long for more – to go farther than my legs could pedal, to get there faster than two wheels could turn, and most importantly, I began to long for company on my journey.
I soon found myself behind the wheel of a bullet-shaped, green Studebaker from the late 1940s. Uglier than sin but more than acceptable for a young woman growing up in rural Maine. (Photo by Frankie Lopez on Unsplash)
Now life could move! And with friends along for the trip. No longer alone, I basked in the admiration of my peers. I enjoyed access to distant towns, and I knew the golden door of opportunity lay just beyond the next curve – or the next – or the next.
And so I kept driving, sure that something destined to be part of my life lay just up the road.
I no longer inhaled fresh air or stopped to ponder grazing cows or budding flowers on my odyssey. The beauty of a sunset illuminating an old red barn, or a deer watching me from behind a stand of hemlocks to my right passed me by. Only the gas in my tank and my imagination limited my mission.
Bound for heaven on earth – just around the bend – or the next – or the next. The route and its gifts no longer mattered to my impatient self. I was looking for a destination.
A CHANGE IN PLANS
And then my life crashed to a halt. Ill health caused me to trade my fast wheeling life for four wheels with a seat. The destination no longer seemed of importance.
My primary vehicle,”Hellon Wheels” with its blue upholstery, didn’t seem adequate to carry me to exciting destinations, of “heaven just around the next bend.” (Photo by on Hans-Moerman Unsplash)
Once again, I had time to inhale fresh air as I traveled. And I depended on a Power outside of myself instead of gas in the tank.
There are many beliefs about how to get to heaven, but as a traveler through life’s hills and valleys, I have come to understand that the way to heaven is not in a pale blue peanut-shaped stroller with a wooden handle on the front. Nor is it in any other vehicle.
BEYOND WHEELS
Are You Prepared For a Trip? (A Poem for Your Journey)
Life is a pilgrimage through many foreign landscapes. I’ve mentioned a few of the vehicles that carried me on my ventures.
There are many more, and I am not talking about cars, trains, or planes. I am thinking of writers who have carried me into faraway lands for adventure and discovery.
And there were the companions who lifted me through difficult times, often on their metaphorical backs. And teachers who pulled me from the swamps of ignorance by guiding my feet on a path of knowledge. (Photo by Aldric Rivat on Unsplash)
Sometimes what seems like the worst vehicle in the world turns out to be the perfect place to learn.
My wheelchair was such a place for me, for it gave me space and time to begin a spiritual journey that continues today, with or without wheels.
And that very first junket? The one coming into this world through the birth canal?
I was naked and unprepared for the most significant expeditions in my life. What makes me think the journey out will be any different?
