Life Is A Highway

 

Funny how life takes you places you never thought about visiting.  When I was younger and thinking about the life ahead, I pretty well knew I wanted to get married and have kids and I wanted to write.  The writer part came first because I was eight when I started writing stories.  So in my mind I was growing up to be a writer, novelist and journalist and would get married and have kids someday.  I loved this country road I was traveling because I could easily see the trees, streams and fields along it. It was relaxing to cruise along and enjoy.
  Getting on the street of education I studied for a teaching degree in English/Journalism. This street was much faster than the country road, but had a lot of signs about cities and tourist places I hadn't been before.  It was nice to cruise along, but when I graduated chose a job as a secretary and starting a family  I diverted onto the ramp of a state highway, fast paced but very scenic. I enjoyed raising my kids and I kept writing; mostly fiction with some little anecdotal articles of things my kids did and sold them to small magazines which kept the flame of my journalist/novelist/writer dream alive.
  The highway changed into an interstate when my husband and I started teaching martial arts to kids and teens as a hobby.  Saturday mornings saw us rushing to get breakfast then piling the kids into the car and heading to the gym to teach sixty kids each week how to protect themselves. 
    By this time our own kids were all in school and after staying home with them for ten years I got out into the job market again, but as a school secretary which isn't really a writer's job either.   Suddenly the speed limit on the interstate went from fifty-five to seventy. But during those years at school I wrote teen fiction and learned how to self publish some books that my kids, my nieces, nephews and kids in school and martial arts really enjoyed. 
   When my youngest graduated from the grade school I was working in, I decided it was time for me to 'retire' so I could write full time. It was still the interstate but I could breathe easier now the speed was back down to fifty-five. That lasted a year when I was asked to work part-time in our church office as once again, a secretary. Actually it was as youth minister but in our church you wear a lot of hats and this job turned into not only being youth leader but becoming tech savvy and setting up computer networks,  creating and providing content for our parish website, social media and creating booklets and brochures on religious subjects.  It wasn't really what I thought my style of writing would be, but I was getting paid to do it among other things and it was teaching me a lot about non-fiction.  The part-time turned into full time and I continued running our martial arts business, took care of husband and kids and wrote fiction on the side and self published my teen books, five in all.  The accelerator was reading seventy-five.  Things were passing by in a blur but there were some interesting rest stops and scenic tours we took. You can't drive across life without stopping and visiting beaches and floating rivers.
  Not long after that I saw an ad for a stringer for our local newspaper and I finally had the chance to become a journalist!  Now I added running around on job assignments which took up weeknights and weekends. That lasted about a year.   My dad got sick.  I could no longer juggle the extra journalism job with everything else and help my mom care for him, so I dropped that job. 
   During the next several years the signs of construction ahead began popping up with lots of detours that took us places we didn't want to go.  We slowed down, sped up, the road got crowded and we were stuck in traffic jams and didn't like the scenery but all the while we had to keep moving because getting off the interstate wasn't an option.
  I began writing a lot more non-fiction, pieces about life and its struggles, about how God wants us to keep looking and hanging on to Him.  My husband and I were speeding down the highway of life, but God was the GPS.  I didn't know where we were going but I kept trying to have faith God knew. It wasn't easy and my writing began to falter especially my fiction writing. Somehow the highway was robbing me of my creative thinking, there was too much to look out for, pot holes, obstacles, and detours for me to make up the fun stories I did in my youth.  But I kept writing, anything to at least be writing.
    My creative writing has been trying to surface lately, struggling to see the scenery on the side of the road and I keep trying to slow down enough to let it. But it wasn't until my husband invited me to speak with college students about being a small business owner, creative content writer for a church and a self publisher writer that the thought hit me. I am a writer and always have been and always will be. While talking with these college students who are also writers it was such a joy to be caught up in their enthusiasm about life, writing and journeys. It helped me see my life in ways I hadn't before; that it's okay to be on the highway because you really don't have a choice about that, but it's in the stopping and looking for refreshment, relaxation and fun that you live your life. And most of all it's in relying on God to be your GPS. Whatever goals or dreams you have for your life, put in His hands and somehow He will guide you to those dreams. You may not realize it until you look back at what you have accomplished through His help.  I realized that I have been a writer all along, and writing an amazing array of different things, fiction, non-fiction, religion, adventures, counsel, advice, how-to, history and so much more. If I hadn't been on the highway I never would have had those opportunities to write so many different things. Life is a highway and with God as your GPS you'll travel amazing places.