Out of the Garage

I kind of had a rough end to my workday yesterday. Completely unrelated to work, but nonetheless distracting from it. I hopped in the car completely aware of a sort of bottomed-out feeling that I just couldn't shake.

In some odd twist of humor, as I started out from the bottom floor of the garage (two levels underground), I saw a squirrel frantically skirting along the edges looking for a way out. My first instinct was to question the possibility of him being down there, and then, when I recalled that any of the three access points at "ground level" could have given him entrance, it made a little more sense. Soon after, the sympathetic animal-lover / emotional-being that I am felt both a pity and a strange camaraderie. How would he find his way out? How would I find my way out?

Not out of the garage, of course. But out of this mess. This indelicate ripping off of a bandage that had been so mindlessly placed over what is now more than a year-old wound, and yet still feels so fresh. I talked with Cliff, I talked with Mom, I prayed. But you know what did it for me? A walk outside.

Sure, yesterday called for rain but there wasn't a drop of it and a cloudy sky couldn't deter me from throwing on my tennis shoes, a pair of shorts, my "I like switchfoot." shirt, and a hoodie and stepping out into it all, once I got home. On the drive home, I thought I wanted silence - space to think. But my route took me along a residential street with mild traffic that parallels I-65 less than a yard away, separated by a thin strip of trees and a barbed-wire fence. And strangely enough, the proximity was therapeutic.

I can't tell you how liberating it felt to walk so closely to an interstate that you literally feel the wind whip off the sides of every car driving by. I walk slow, they drive fast. And the sound was enough that I didn't have to think. Every car flying by seemed to take with it a small portion of the hurt, the burden, and the confusion, at least enough that it wasn't so all-consuming any longer.

The Lord is funny, I think. And I am grateful he knows me and prompts me to do some things sometimes that don't make sense. Most of what plagued me for hours yesterday afternoon just feels, well, it feels lighter. I couldn't tell him what was on my heart, but He knew and He used that walk to pull me out of the proverbial bottom floor of the garage... thank goodness.