and i catch up on my podcasts

Whew. Made it to the burbs. Wedding week begins. It's funny how when you take a certain trip over and over again it doesn't seem as long anymore. Driving to Iowa City used to seem like a pretty big time committment and now passing it is usually just on the way to somewhere else. I really like driving, it's relaxing and there's nothing to distract me from my own thoughts unless it's of my choosing. I used to really fear alone time, especially when trapped inside a car. I'd find any way to include someone in what I was doing. I'd go so far as to mentally map out who I could call and talk to, calculating how long I could carry on an interesting conversation without boring them and in what order my attention span would require these conversations to take place. I'd take mental notes of interesting road signs or other drivers doing peculair things and assign the anecdotes to the people on the list according to relevant inside jokes or shared memories.

Living at home has made me very comfortable with alone time. I'm constantly (and usually subconsciously) retreating to my room just so I can stop thinking about things like the dishwasher. I think it's a good skill, a sign of maturity even. I've regressed to a more childlike state in almost every other area except my fear of being alone. Driving to Jess's a lot this summer has been a little vacation every few weeks and the driving isn't dreaded like it used to be. Driving through Iowa in the summer is so peaceful. Everything passes by so gently, instead of being boring it's just nice that I know I'm not missing anything if I answer a text message or concentrate on figuring out what the guy behind me is singing along to.

Somewhere in the middle of Illinois, right where it's about to get truly boring, the power lines start. All of a sudden they appear on all sides, connecting one mysterious far away place to another. I loved power lines when I was little. I knew that when there were more power lines we were getting closer to somewhere special (Cedar Rapids!!). I especially loved the ones right next to the road. I would lay across the back seat, tilt my head back to look out the window and watch them upside down, bobbing my head along, fascinated at how they each drooped the exact same amount. I knew that power lines were something that people came up with, but they seemed so natural there alongside the road. Powerlines and trees belonged in the same category when I was younger. I knew that powerlines were put there by someone, but I also knew that trees were planted by people and that whoever put them there did it a long time ago. I thought that the huge wooden poles were trees that had grown along the (even older) road that were planted just to eventually be stripped of their branches and tied up with wires. I wondered what it used to look like when the perfectly placed trees still had their branches and leaves and the road was probably shady and you couldn't even see the clouds, even when you were in the front seat. Pictures of tree-lined boulevards just looked like young highways. I knew that one day, when the trees were tall enough, they would be turned into power lines and the roads would be connected and then you could drive fast. The trees would miss their leaves but would be excited that it was time for them to fulfill their purpose and carry electricity. Even the huge metal structures seemed natural, stretching on as far as you could see. Electricity was something that people came up with too, but just another thing that we figured out after God already put it there. Electricity belonged into the "things unseen" category along with wind and imagination. Things that we just saw the evidence of but would never really understand until heaven.

The power lines are still a signal that I'm getting closer to somewhere bigger and it's still exciting to know that I'm making progress. That's the real reason that God made power lines, so that we could understand that the little things in life that we don't understand are sometimes just evidence that there are greater things to come.