Wandering in the Wilderness

Recently I drove from the Knoxville area of East Tennessee to the Greenville-Spartanburg area in South Carolina to visit my sister. Ordinarily, this is a three and a half hour drive, but due to Hurricane Helene, most of the roads in western North Carolina remain closed, so I planned to drive north, then southeast to circumvent the storm damage. What I hadn’t planned on was missing my exit and winding up a hundred miles further up the road than I needed to be.

Obviously, I should have planned better. I should have actually researched the best route rather than relying on a vague memory of earlier travel or my notoriously unreliable phone.

I don’t know if my phone actually suggested I exit, or if I didn’t hear the suggestion because of my travel companion’s constant monologue. In tuning him out, had I also tuned out the phone?

I doubt it. What I don’t doubt is that I am often in a state of “thought deprivation,” possibly a term I have just coined, due to a lack of quiet space and uninterrupted time. Time I dearly cherish to be alone with my thoughts. Time where ideas flow and writing flourishes. At any rate, the symptoms of “thought deprivation” in my case are similar to those of sleep deprivation, where parents of infants may find themselves walking in a brain-fog, being irritable, or having flu-like symptoms. This is normal and, thankfully, usually a short-term situation.

“Thought deprivation” occurs when one is interrupted every few minutes by a question or comment that requires an answer. Such was the case for much of this trip. Hence my symptoms: lack of concentration, irritability, headache.

Once I realized I’d missed the turn, I should have backtracked, but I trusted my phone’s navigation to take me to I-77, which I mistakenly assumed would be a lot closer than it actually was. I stubbornly persisted on the route it prescribed.

Hours later, tired of driving, tired of listening to my traveling companion’s commentary on the setting sun and cloud formations, I allowed my mind to wander a bit as the darkening skies quieted his words.

Driving while “lost” is frustrating. I felt like pitching a little fit, but knew it wouldn’t do any good. The only way to was through. If I wanted to arrive at my sister’s house, I had to continue driving. There weren’t any shortcuts, no magical transport awaiting us. We just had to keep going. Having no concept of where we were or when we might arrive added to my frustration.

Was Greenville before or after Charlotte? Why was my phone telling me to head toward Asheville?

I finally called my sister, who checked our location on a map. “Yeah, it’s going to be awhile. You might want to stop for dinner.” And so we did.

When life gets hard, as it often does, we have to just keep driving, keep moving through the difficulties we face. New problems, new situations can seem hopeless. We may feel like quitting, like never getting out of bed again, but that doesn’t get us anywhere. The way out is through, or so I’ve heard. Psalm 23 reminds us that we “walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” not to it.

I realize my prolonged route through the Carolinas was an inconvenience, not a hardship. The people affected by the hurricane and flooding suffered greatly, and I pray they are comforted. I pray that they will continue putting one foot in front of the other and find a way through that valley of darkness.