Last weekend, I took a road trip in the strictest sense: packed-in car, spontaneous sing-alongs (yes, Part of Your World made an appearance, and yes, it was magical), that dizzy relief of solid ground after hours of rolling over flat roads.
Our route was a good one: Santa Cruz to Pescadero, San Franscisco to Marin Headlands, Saucalito to Sonoma.
That last night we stayed in a motel in Sonoma, which seemed totally swanky after two days of hosteling. Especially since I spent most of our night at the Marin Headlands hostel huddled in a top bunk on a sweatshirt-thick mattress, serenaded by intermittent, maraca-like snores. I think I may have, at one point, prayed that God cut off that woman's air supply.
So we loved that motel. Especially that hot tub, in which we spent a good hour, sipping fizzy wine and admiring Sonoma's star-stitched quilt of a sky.
After some failed attempts to name constellations, our hot-tub conversation turned to the charmed nature of our trip.
A kind grace just wove through it: walking out of the Santa Cruz Boardwalk just as a zealous cop had walked toward our expired meter; stumbling into Saints Peter and Paul church to join the Saturday night mass in reciting The Lord's Prayer; the ipod shuffling up Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence as we crested the mist-cloaked cliffs of PCH; and perhaps most miraculous of all, me remembering there would be a bin of free earplugs at the hostel desk (this just minutes after I'd prayed for that snorer's spontaneous suffocation).
I've always been obsessed with the story of manna. The Israelite people prayed for food, and were given only daily bread, falling from the sky in the form of manna. If they tried to keep any extra, it all rotted. They had to learn to live with the expectancy that grace would provide.
A really great trip brings about that same kind of awareness. Jars of Clay describes it as the faith of an empty hand. This was that kind of trip. The kind that helped me realize I've got to stop letting empty spots in my life shoot an ice-wave of panic down my spine. I want my lack to bring release, excitement, and wonder, instead of fear. I want faith enough to wait with expectancy for grace. I will not be able to horde it. But I want to receive it, palms up.
A kind grace just wove through it: walking out of the Santa Cruz Boardwalk just as a zealous cop had walked toward our expired meter; stumbling into Saints Peter and Paul church to join the Saturday night mass in reciting The Lord's Prayer; the ipod shuffling up Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence as we crested the mist-cloaked cliffs of PCH; and perhaps most miraculous of all, me remembering there would be a bin of free earplugs at the hostel desk (this just minutes after I'd prayed for that snorer's spontaneous suffocation).
I've always been obsessed with the story of manna. The Israelite people prayed for food, and were given only daily bread, falling from the sky in the form of manna. If they tried to keep any extra, it all rotted. They had to learn to live with the expectancy that grace would provide.
A really great trip brings about that same kind of awareness. Jars of Clay describes it as the faith of an empty hand. This was that kind of trip. The kind that helped me realize I've got to stop letting empty spots in my life shoot an ice-wave of panic down my spine. I want my lack to bring release, excitement, and wonder, instead of fear. I want faith enough to wait with expectancy for grace. I will not be able to horde it. But I want to receive it, palms up.
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