Driving Home Love

How intentional are you in your life? Patricia Raybon asks us to consider just that.

Elisa

Driving Home Love

By Patricia Raybon

My sprite of a car is almost as old as me. Well, not quite. It’s creeping up on 40 years and, as my picture shows, I’m way past that number.

But the car? It keeps running.

“So, hold onto it,” a neighbor across the street tells me. “It’ll give you 300,000 miles.”

He should know. His 90-something dad has a sedan exactly like mine and both are still going strong—the man and the car.

At the repair shop where I get mine serviced, one young guy flat-out covets my ride. “If you ever want to sell it,” he tells me every time, “let me know first.”

I smile, turning to my faithful sedan waiting in the parking lot. But I haven’t one lick of a plan to sell it. The car means too much. Except it shouldn’t. Not in a spiritual or Bible way. That’s what I’d told myself. That a car is just transportation. Then, this car suddenly meant more, and that relationship with a vehicle seemed strange. But it’s been a strange year.

Dan, my husband of 49 years, passed away last year, which makes me a widow—a word I’ve said I hated because it means that, legally, I’m not married anymore.

But I didn’t divorce. Instead, my husband died. And I’m suddenly single.

So, I drive a pretty cool car? Is that what’s happening? With its stick shift. Five gears on the floor. Sunroof up top. Spoiler out back. No car note.  Cheap monthly insurance.

Even better? “Nobody will ever steal it,” a repair guy told me, “because nobody knows how to drive a stick anymore.”

He’s right. When I first brought my turbo into a dealer for a horn repair, folks scoured the dealership to find “some old guy in the back” who could drive it into the service bay.

So, it’s a relic of sorts. A European import showing its age. But there’s more, and the more has started to matter. Because Dan picked it out for me. He’d taught me how to drive a stick years before, so he urged me to purchase this one when I needed a daily driver.

But only Dan took it in for the oil changes and checkups, the tire rotations and shock absorbers. He pampered it, seeming smitten. But why my love affair with the car now? What’s the spiritual lesson, in fact, of my loyalty and attention to my metal and chrome?

After a year without Dan, I finally figured it out.

Driving the car reminds me to be intentional. Because that’s the only way to drive it. There’s all that clutch and gear action, giving it gas or easing off the pedal—braking to gear down or staying lose to gear up, and at the perfect moment. Or you stall.  

“You drive these cars,” as my repair guy said, not just ride behind the steering wheel. To get where you’re going takes focus. Being intentional.

Same with family. I once thought Dan odd for always wanting to eat dinner together every night. To never forget a birthday or anniversary. For traveling cross country to see family and friends.

For helping folks with a need. Always speaking to strangers. Stopping to talk with neighbors. Or, as Paul said: Be careful how you live. Or said Jesus: Be wise not foolish, especially with how we love.

And drive? “Both hands on the wheel,” Dan would say. Why? He’d give me a look, meaning this: Because I love you.

I reflect now, in fact, that in the Christian mysteries I write, Dan would suggest the car details. Every novel I’ve written, in fact, has a car scene.  

In my latest, a solider is driving a ‘39 Ford coupe, shifting like crazy, racing a girl home after curfew on a dark night. It’s a meet-cute moment but goes wrong, the young lady stewing she won’t arrive home without trouble.

Is that Dan in the scene? Well, Dan approved it, so being intentional is at play. That’s how to drive home on our darkest nights. On purpose. Letting Jesus take the wheel. Then even a car teaches: in His way, we best make this trip.

 Patricia Raybon is a Christy Award–winning Colorado author of historical mysteries. Her three-book series featured Annalee Spain, a young theologian and Sherlock Holmes fan. Her latest book is The Sedalia Code, a World War Two mystery set in the deep South. Patricia also writes devotional content for Our Daily Bread Ministries, where she's a regular contributor. Patricia honed her writing skills in two big-city Colorado newsrooms. Mid-career she taught news reporting and magazine journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder for 15 years. Patricia was inducted into the Colorado Authors' Hall of Fame in 2021. Connect with her at patriciaraybon.com