Detours

On a recent trip with my family, we ran into a couple of different detours. I'm not exactly sure, but I think -- all told -- both detours added a total of about 30 miles to our trip. Not bad on a 900 mile journey!

I tend not to like detours. They do not fit into my nice, neatly planned schedule. It is the unpredictability that makes me uncomfortable.

These particular detours, however, have afforded me the opportunity to think, not about detours while in the car, but instead about the detours of my life. There have been many -- more than I can remember, and perhaps even more than I realize.

Like most detours while on a road trip, the detours of my life have typically been met with unwelcome exclamations. Oh, no! Where will this take me? How much will this send me out of the way? How long before I will be back where I know where I am going?

But looking back -- going forward while looking in the rearview mirror -- I see that it is on the detours, or through the detours, that I have encountered and realized some of my life's richest experiences. On the detours, I have stretched, and grown, and lived.

By the detours, I have made my home -- often too briefly -- in places I never would have otherwise dwelt. On the detours, I have met people who have altered and transformed my life for the better, and for good. On the detours, my perspective has changed, and my worldview has been granted visions I never thought myself capable of seeing.

I must confess that I have not always enjoyed the detours: on the contrary. I have often railed against them, but today -- for this moment, at least -- I can honestly say that I am grateful for many of the detours I have encountered. They have sent me off the anticipated path of predictability, out into my own forested, uncharted wilderness, and driven me to seek earnestly, trust completely, and live deeply.

I wonder what I will think the next time the detour sign stands as a sentinel beside my Emmaus road...