The Red Sea

I hate driving. OK, sometimes I enjoy the solitude it provides when I am taking a long trip by myself. But in general I dislike traveling. Too many trips made in substandard vehicles without the proper monetary support, stringing along on a shoestring and a prayer, forced to deal with the breakdowns, the getting stuck in bad weather when you can't afford to duck into a convenient hotel, munching stale sandwiches because "store-boughten" meals are too pricey.

I have survived enough accidents, strandings, vehicluar disfunctions, and creative financing expeditions to last a life time. I wish to be free of that sort of anxiety and stress. But sometimes we find ourselves doing things we prefer not to do out of love for our family, especially our kids.

So I found myself traversing the I95 corridor on the day after Christmas, forging my way from Lake George, NY to Haw River, NC. I know the DC area is notorious for heavy traffice, but what we encountered was beyond astronomical. It was downright obnoxious. The already strained infrastructure was completely overwhelmed by holiday traffic added on to workday commutes. I hardly expected to find myself driving at 20mph straight from New Jersey through Delaware into Maryland and DC and on beyond as far as Richmond, Va. Good Lord, what a nightmare. We hit DC around 4:30, creeping and crawling along, starting and stopping, weaving from lane to lane in hope of finding some loophole that would sling us out of the traffic of the locals and into the bypass mode.

Suddenly, there it was. I had just moved into the far left lane when we saw a sign for a HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lane. 3 passengers required. The on ramp was just past the sign, and we were exactly in the right place to jump ship. For a good 15 minutes, we sailed along the crowded HOV lane at 45 mph, gleefully remarking about the poor slobs still in the slow moving traffic. I had every reason to expect our new freedom would take us well beyond the city and the heavy traffic.

But no! Unexpectedly, the HOV traffic slowed to a crawl, moving at a snail's pace that even the regular traffic lanes surpassed. Ah, yes. Merging back into the regular traffic, the three HOV lanes not only collapsed into one lane, they merged into the left lane of the four lanes of regular traffic. By the time we exited the HOV lane, it was dark. Miles and miles of red taillights stretched out before us, all moving at an excruciatingly slow pace. A sea of red. It was downright disheartening. And besides, now I had to go to the bathroom, and there were no rest areas in sight. In fact, there hadn't been for hours.

Now what! Time to pray. Minutes later, as I navigated into the middle lane, we saw the rest area sign. Thank you Lord! Even after a short break the heavy traffic tried our patience for some time. Remind me not to do this again soon. I knew there were reasons I had left the east coast. Well, there's no help for it but to continue forward. It will be hours before we see North Carolina. It has already been twelve hours of driving. There is no second wind these days. Only God's grace. He will enable, and I will move forward. There is always tomorrow to rest.