Finding Freedom

I’m pastoring a church in my hometown. Trust me; no one is more surprised by that than me. God has a great sense of humor. I’m sure there are folks from my past who wonder what these church folks are thinking. I left this little one redlight town at eighteen years old, eager to see the world, and thinking family and farm were the only ties that could inspire occasional visits. Now, forty years later, I’m here every week embracing the slower pace and the genuine people. I’d forgotten what it was like to travel more than a couple of miles in a half hour of traffic during afternoon rush hour. God may indeed be chuckling, but once again He has shown me that he loves me and provides what is best for me, even before I can see or understand it.

My wife recently asked me where I hung out as a teenager in my hometown. My first answers were dove fields, fence rows, fishponds, and people’s houses. After a little more thought, I knew the real answer was driving. I drove. Whether rumbling down dirt roads with open windows, flying along the local county-maintained roads and state highways, scooting around town with friends, cruising the strip in a nearby town, racing down fire breaks and old logging roads on my dirt bike, or riding the rows on a John Deere, I was driving. It’s what I did to escape, where I went to think, and even how I learned to pray. It’s where I felt free.

In more recent years, I’ve put almost 300,000 miles on my old F150 that I bought new in 2012. But my old truck is way more than a means of transportation. It’s my office. It’s my classroom. It’s my worship center, sanctuary, and prayer closet. It’s where I listen to podcasts, sermons, audiobooks, and leadership lessons. It’s the only place I sing worship songs at the top of my lungs. It’s where I pray out loud and sit and listen in silence. It’s where I reflect on the stories others have poured over me and the criticisms that threaten to level me. It’s where I most often mold my apologies and refine my teaching. I think it may be where I do my best thinking.

I have an office in my house, an office at the church, an office in the parsonage, and an office for counseling. I have access to classrooms, still quiet places to pray, and a church sanctuary. They each have their purpose and their value. Yet, when I really need to focus, I get in my truck. Whether parked under the pines, or blurring the signs, everything is unmoving and unchanging inside my truck. Freedom. Freedom to think, sing, cry, pray, listen, talk, or just be silent with no one watching. Freedom to be me.  

I won’t be so cliché to say that God rides shotgun. Somehow that seems to belittle his presence and guidance. But when I close the door to my truck, with or without my chocolate lab hanging out the passenger window, I’m often more acutely aware of Emmanuel than while navigating the busyness of life outside the truck.

I’m not so sure I was eager to leave my hometown. Perhaps I just wanted to keep driving. Perhaps I needed the freedom I couldn’t find at home. I thought I found God elsewhere, and he’d somehow sent me back home. Perhaps he’s been with me all along. Perhaps my freedom was and is less about driving alone and more about being alone with him. Perhaps some places are just easier to experience freedom in Christ. Perhaps those places have addresses. Perhaps they don’t. Perhaps they are defined by focus rather than location.