4 Years on Highway 1
July 6, 2008
Davenport, California, population about 350, staying at the Davenport Roadhouse Restaurant and Inn. It is a great little tiny town on the Highway 1. It’s our 4 year wedding anniversary. I sit out on the deck on a handmade rocker while Tonya takes a shower, and what a great moment this is to be so reflective while using up the last few pages of this journal, which has actually taken me a couple months short of a year to finish!
I am not sure it has ever taken me this long to fill a journal, but how great it is to look back through one book containing so much of life as I’ve seen it throughout the course of several months!
I was looking back through it before we went walking around the beach earlier, and I am amazed by all the things I have walked through over the last several months. I have seen my life be really turned upside down and I have seen it come to great blessings in a completion only God could provide. There were so many moments I wondered what the hell God was trying to do in my life, and why he seemed to keep great things from happening in my life; things I completely intended to glorify him greatly with.
Then I look at where I would have actually been if he had simply given me what I wanted at the time and simply placed me where I was sure I was supposed to be. I look at things as they are now and see God’s amazing protection in place. I would be so destroyed right now if I were where I thought I was supposed to be. I would be burdened and heavy-hearted if I were doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing at that time.
But now, I cannot deny my Abba’s love and protection in my life. I was SO SURE of what I was supposed to do where I was supposed to be, and I was confident that God would be glorified and honored by the ministry I would have been able to do in his name, but my Abba was there to protect.
I think of a child who wants more and more candy. It’s so good! How could something be so good and be withheld with such assurance? But the Father knows that candy will rot your stomach and bring you pain. But my Father knows I would have only known more pain if I were where I was sure I was supposed to be.
And now, I find myself doing what I love. It is my furthest long-term goal up to this point. I am still happily married to the girl I’ve always wanted, and I still give my God all the credit, honor, and glory for it all. My Father is very fond of me, and nonsensical protection and provision has proven that with more sense than I could write a hundred books about.
As I look down the long dark highway 1, I realize how incredibly long that road actually is in either direction from where I am at this tiny Davenport point upon it. For miles behind me that brought us here, and for miles ahead of me that I am not intending to take at this point. All along it, though, there is phenomenal beauty and magnificent mountains to enjoy.
4 years of marriage behind us and numerous ones ahead, but there will be beauty along the way. More importantly, there will be an Abba Father all along the way who always knows what is best even if I cannot understand or recognized it. All along the way there will be my Abba father who will lovingly allow me to make choices I am sure will hurt me and others in my lifetime, but I am confident that same Abba Father will protect and provide if I choose to obey and trust, even when that trust cuts to the bone of my own personal hopes, dreams, and ideals.
My Father God is very fond of me, and…