Life is a Highway

A lot of my life is spent driving. Driving to work, driving to the store, driving home, driving to school, driving to Lehi. To home. To school. Again and again. Packing up my life into my old ripped up East High Cheer bag. Going back and forth between my homes. The thing is, I love to drive. I love having nothing to do but listen to music and think. Nothing to worry about it, to let it all go for the next few hours you have stuck in the seat.

On Friday I drove home in rain. I love the rain. I am obsessed with driving in it. The windshield wiper motions, the pitter patter on the car roof, the smell coming through the vents. It is relaxing and beautiful. I feel like that was my life a few months ago. Driving in the rain. Every little thing was beautiful. I was in cruise control on the best ride of my life. Well on Friday we started going through the canyon where rain turned into snow in a matter of seconds. I hate driving in the snow. The slipping and sliding, the accidents on the side of the road, driving 2 miles per hour, constantly shifting gears and slamming on the brakes, the fear of losing control. I feel like that is my life now. In a matter of seconds, my rain turned to snow. The past few months I have had to constantly shift gears to stay in control. I have to watch accidents on the side of the road. I am driving 2 miles per hour on a long slow stretch of road covered in snow, just trying to stay alive.

Even though I hate the snow, and even though long car rides can get tedious, I still love to drive. I love the conversations I have with Ann Marie and Anna on our drives home. I love singing in the front seat of the car with my dad on road trips. That tradition has to be one of my all-time favorites. Just time for me and my dad, singing our Schoolhouse Rock, Saturday’s Warriors, and Brother Bear in that front seat of the Suburban, passing cows and ghost towns. I loved the car rides back to school with Zach that turned 2 hours of driving into 30 seconds of love and laughter with my best friend. But there are also the car rides I hate. The car rides where you can’t even see the road because your contacts are caked over with tears. The car rides back from trips that you didn’t want to end. The car rides where you have too much time to think about your heartaches.

But I still love to drive. So excuse the silly analogy of my life to car rides, but driving consumes my time lately. My highway is still an incredible one, but right now is just one of those rough patches through the snow-filled canyon. When I get past it, I will be driving in the rain again.