eucharisteo: day four. //

{taking to the road.}

for the past few days, wanderlust has been striking me hard.

I feel like someone with a terminal disease, given a month to live. I feel like there are a million places I want to see, a million grounds I want to walk on, a million pictures I want to take. maybe it's the summer air, the fresh smell every morning that beckons... whispering in my ear that this free time, this ability to just get in my car and drive, will be gone soon enough. in two short months, I'll be back to the books, chained once again to a Latin book and a brick school building and the million and a half commitments that September will bring.

that beckoning, the sudden realization that the everlasting summer may just be waning, is all I need. I turn the key in the ignition and pull out of my driveway. I pick someplace within reasonable distance, sacrificing my gas money to the hungry gods of the highway and the river and the coffee shops I've never been to.

there is nothing quite like spontaneously going somewhere different and interesting. I thrive on the feeling that I'm somewhere I've never been before. somehow, I manage to be both a creature of habit and a creature that eats up new experiences, new terrain, new memories. maybe it really is mostly about the memories- the feeling that I am doing something, right now, that I will remember, that's not something I've done a million times. I'm not at Bucer's again. I'm standing in the calm ebb and flow of the shallows of this lake. I'm driving through a canyon. I wouldn't remember another cup of coffee. but I'll probably remember this.

I guess the thanksgiving is for a lot of things. first, for the time to do these things. time is precious, it really is, and I take it for granted too often.

second, for the places themselves: God grants scenery, and cool towns, and nature. the world could all just be one boring, uniform place where everything looks the same, but it's not. by His Grace, it's full of things to be seen and touched and done.

third, and perhaps most importantly, for the very joy of wandering. for the pleasure we get when we take a turn in the road and see something we've never seen before. for the way it feels to do something different, and not even see it coming.

God gives us a life full of surprises, of twists in the road, of a sense of freedom and a sense of urgency, sometimes both at once. He gives us new eyes and hungry eyes that want to see His world, and that want to see it now, because maybe we can do it tomorrow, and maybe we can't, and memories have to be made.