Anyone who knows me knows I’m a little nerdy. Maybe very nerdy.

I’ve always liked lists. To-do lists. Grocery lists. Checklists. Project lists. Best movie lists. Favorite books. Places I want to visit.

Attributes for a new wife.

Yeah. I even have one of those.

I told you I was nerdy.

Lists help me organize, plan, prioritize, and remember. They also help me think. Putting words on paper clarifies my thoughts, helps me analyze a problem, and often leads to a good solution. There’s something satisfying about turning my jumbled thoughts into an orderly list.

Of course, I don’t do everything on my to-do list the way I used to. I probably never did, but these days I’m less structured. Priorities change, plans get abandoned, and sometimes I simply start over.

Maybe it’s age, retirement, or maturity. Maybe I’m just a little less anal. I’d like to think I’m learning to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit rather than assuming my list knows best.

Whatever the reason, I still make lists. One has been on my refrigerator for the last eight years. I call it my A List.

I created it while preparing for retirement, hoping to give some structure to my empty days. But it became more than a retirement planning exercise. In the foggy days after my wife died, the process of thinking and praying about what mattered most helped me see a future I couldn’t yet imagine. I couldn’t see much beyond sundown some days, but I could put a few words on paper about the direction I wanted to go.

The list became a map, not of places to visit, but of the person I wanted to be. It helped me reorient myself and begin living again.

At least when I remembered to look at it.

I eventually put it on the refrigerator in my camper, where I couldn’t easily ignore it. I called it my A List because the items were supposed to be my top priorities during retirement. But the name had another meaning, too. See if you can spot it.

A List

Today - Seize the day and live life to the fullest

Pray - Enjoy the presence of God in Bible reading, meditation, and prayer

Display - Show love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control

Make Hay - Work diligently wherever opportunity arises

Play - Go on an adventure. Have fun!

Say Hey - Socialize with friends and strangers in person and online

Okay - Check in with family

Hurray - Celebrate victories large and small

Hey! - Delight in learning new things

Someday - Dream on!

The list stared me in the face every day in my cramped camper, daring me to live again. I’d start with Today and work my way toward Someday, trying to make the most of each day without giving up on the future.

Three years into my camping life, I started dating a little.

I met an art teacher on Facebook. We’d talked on the phone several times and decided to meet in person to see if there might be a romantic spark. However, she wanted to get to know me before risking a chance encounter with one of her students while we were sharing a meal, so she agreed to come over to my camper.

I was hopeful.

Everything was clean and organized. The windows were open, and the awning and chairs were out. This was going to be good.

We sat in the shade on a pleasant afternoon and talked about family, backgrounds, her job, my travels, and spiritual things. We had covered some of that ground on the phone, but meeting in person called for a little review. She was attractive, the conversation came easily, and I liked the idea of getting to know her better. She met the essential criteria on my list of attributes for a new wife.

We walked the big circle of campsites around the campground, enjoying the warm afternoon by the lake as the sun headed for the horizon. Then I invited her inside for a cold drink.

My camper was small, with few possessions. I gave her the grand tour. Four steps and we were done.

Standing in the narrow walkway, she noticed the refrigerator door. She looked at the family pictures, and I explained who was in each. Then she turned her attention to my A List.

I wanted her to like it. I wanted her to find it amusing and clever, maybe even impressive. More than that, I wanted her to find the person behind it interesting. We’d already talked about the kinds of things on the list, so I was confident she would appreciate it.

I watched her face as she began reading.

I don’t know how far she got. It couldn’t have been very far. She glanced up at me, rolled her eyes, and turned around to sit at my kitchen table.

That was that.

Or at least, that’s how it felt to me.

I’d poured my heart into that list. It had helped me find direction when my life had fallen apart, and it represented the person I was trying to become. Her reaction felt like a dismissal of the list and, by extension, of me.

I’d taken a risk by letting her see something personal. Now I was wondering whether I’d made a mistake.

But I wasn’t going to pretend to be someone else just to win over a date. That seemed a poor foundation for a relationship. I didn’t need someone who made lists like I did, or who shared every one of my priorities. I did need someone who could accept that this was part of who I was and who I hoped to become.

I called her the next day and told her I wasn’t the man she was looking for. She didn’t disagree. A part of me really wanted her to argue the point.

Of course, I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t the man I was looking for yet, either.

Still working on that.

My A List remains on my refrigerator. I’ve added two more lists in the same vein, my B List and my Be List. They’re more tongue-in-cheek attempts to keep challenging myself to become the person I want to be.

I don’t always follow them. I don’t always remember to look at them. And I certainly haven’t become the person I hoped to be when I first put the A List together.

But I haven’t given up on the project.

Maybe someday I’ll be vulnerable enough to invite someone into my kitchen again and let her read all three lists. It hasn’t happened since that afternoon, and at this late date, probably won’t.

Still, you never know.

And if it does happen, she’ll have to be careful.

I’ll be watching her eyes as she reads.

I suspect we’re all works in progress, whether we keep lists or not. We make plans, change direction, take a few chances, and occasionally discover something about ourselves when we least expect it. Won’t you tell me about it?

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“Would you like to be part of the show?”

I stared at her, trying to process what she’d just asked. Tracee Ellis Ross, the star of a Broadway show, was standing in front of me, inviting me to join her onstage.

And I said, “Huh?”

But once again, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I returned to New York last July for the first time in years. The city felt surprisingly familiar. It seemed a little safer than the New York I remembered from the late seventies, but also a little sadder.

Back then, I’d spent three weeks in the city for training to become a Computer Audit Specialist, a designation that ultimately didn’t mean much for my career. My wife flew up one weekend, and we squeezed as many stereotypically New York experiences as possible into forty-eight hours.

Nostalgia played a leading role in my visit this past summer, although the city didn’t always seem to cooperate with my memories.

Taxis weren’t everywhere anymore, replaced in part by Uber. Street vendors selling hot dogs seemed to have disappeared. The little shops where you could grab a morning bagel had given way, at least in my memory, to avocado toast. And the pizza places and delis that once seemed to occupy every corner were harder to find.

I coordinated the trip with a High School friend. We flew into LaGuardia and met there. The airport was bright and new compared with the one in my memories. We took the bus into Queens and then the subway downtown. That sounds very New Yorkish, but I’m telling you about it with a definite Southern accent.

On our first full day there, we met another friend from high school for lunch near Central Park. She’d lived in New York for years before recently moving to the suburbs with her husband. We spent a delightful afternoon wandering through the park, followed by dinner with her and one of her New York friends.

The next morning, we went to TKTS to buy discounted tickets for a Broadway show. Waiting in line for the office to open, I began talking to people around us. I’ve grown more curious about strangers as I’ve gotten older. You never know what someone might have to tell you, and people are often happy to talk about themselves if you give them the chance.

One young man particularly caught my attention. I’ll call him Robert. He was visiting from San Francisco, where he sang in the opera chorus.

I’d never given much thought to what it takes to sing in an opera chorus, so I asked questions. Robert explained the demanding auditions, the need to sight-read complex scores, the challenge of memorizing music quickly, and the need to sing in multiple languages. And opera choruses aren’t simply people standing on risers wearing robes. They’re extras onstage, in costume, running, hiding, and reacting in character while singing in harmony with other singers scattered across the stage.

Rehearsals are long. Performances are exacting. Someone else is always waiting for your job, and if you don’t take care of your voice, it may abandon you when you need it most.

I came away with a new appreciation for the work that goes into a performance. More importantly, I’d learned something interesting about someone I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t introduced myself.

It’s so easy to look right past the person standing next to you.

As we stood in line, someone recommended a one-woman show called Every Brilliant Thing to my friend, starring Tracee Ellis Ross, the mother on the television sitcom Black-ish. They’d seen the show and enjoyed it. That was good enough for us, so we bought tickets for the matinee.

We arrived early and found our seats close to the stage. My friend sat on my left. On my right was Margot, from New Jersey, who was a little flirty and perhaps more than a little drunk. She and her companions provided some pre-show entertainment.

There was no curtain. A few rows of seats occupied the stage, on both sides and at the back, surrounding the performance area. When we arrived, Tracee Ellis Ross was already standing there, talking with someone from the stage crew.

I watched her for a while, but was soon distracted by Margot. At the same time, my friend and I were also carrying on our own sporadic conversation. My attention was divided, unaware that one of the most memorable encounters of my trip was about to happen.

“Excuse me!”

I looked up. Tracee Ellis Ross was standing directly in front of me.

I hadn’t even realized she’d left the stage.

Again, she said, “Excuse me!”

She was looking at me.

“Yes?” I said, a little uncertainly. I was still convinced she’d mistaken me for someone else.

“Have you seen the show before?”

“No.”

“Have you heard about what happens?”

Again, no.

“Would you like to be part of the show?”

I didn’t know what to say.

My inner introvert was screaming no. But another part of me, a part that has grown louder in recent years, was saying, You’ll regret it if you don’t.

I split the difference.

“Huh?”

Yes, that was my response to a Broadway star inviting me to participate in her show. Not “Absolutely!” Not “Sure thing!” Not even “Could you tell me more about it?”

“Huh?”

She repeated the question. “Would you like to be part of the show?”

I managed to improve my response slightly.

“I’m not sure.”

What I needed was a little time. I wasn’t saying no. I was hoping for a few minutes to overcome my surprise, gather my courage, and consult the committee in my head that evaluates embarrassing situations.

Unfortunately, Broadway doesn’t operate like that.

My friend jumped in and said, “I’ll do it!”

I assume he didn’t look old enough for the part she had in mind. So she walked away and found someone else.

There would be no second chance. No return visit after I’d had time to think. Someone else got to play her dad, with his spontaneous responses and extemporaneous soliloquies. It was exactly the sort of thing I would have liked to do, if I’d had enough time to prepare myself.

My Broadway moment of fame had slipped away with a “Huh?”

I’ve always had a frustrating relationship with verbal agility. I can think of the perfect response in about two hours. In the moment, though, when I’m surprised or uncertain, the words often disappear. The introvert who wishes he could be an extrovert suddenly has nothing.

It’s particularly annoying when I actually want to say something, anything at all, just to be part of the conversation. Even more so when I really want to say yes.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more willing to approach strangers and try new things. My conversation with Robert was an example. I could have stood in line quietly, stared at my phone, and learned nothing about the interesting young man standing next to me.

But when an unexpected opportunity came my way, I couldn’t say anything.

There’s a difference between deciding to take a chance on your own and having one come your way unexpectedly. Apparently, I can manage the first better than the second.

Looking back, I wish I’d said yes. I could have told people I performed on Broadway and had a good story to tell.

Of course, if I had said yes, I have no idea how I would have done. Perhaps I would have been wonderful. Perhaps I would have tripped over my tongue and embarrassed myself in front of a theater full of people.

Either of those possibilities would have made a pretty good anecdote.

Instead, I watched someone else take my part and wondered what might have happened if I had answered differently.

We don’t always get another bite at the apple. The Big Apple, in this case.

I don’t intend to turn this into a lesson about seizing every opportunity. Some opportunities are better left alone. Not every invitation requires a yes.

But now and then, we need to get out of our own way and do what scares us without overthinking it.

Next time, maybe I will.

After all, I almost made it to the Broadway stage in New York City once upon a time.

Have you ever hesitated when an unexpected opportunity came your way, only to wish that you’d said yes? Or have you surprised yourself by saying yes to something you might normally have talked yourself out of?

I’d love to hear your story.

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I was standing at the Alum Cave Trail trailhead leading to Mount Le Conte in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, wearing hiking boots, carrying a backpack, and holding a trekking pole.

I looked like an experienced hiker, but I wasn’t.

Far from it.

This was a terrible idea at age 63. My whole retirement plan was a departure from my normal conservative, reserved nature. You might even call it bold, audacious, and reckless. And it was. But sometimes in life you just need to do something crazy. This was my time.

I looked over at the trail. What had I gotten myself into?

I planned to hike 5.5 miles to the Le Conte Lodge, near the top, then turn around and hike back to my car before dark. Eleven miles. About 3,000 feet of elevation gain. My summit was at 6,400 feet.

I’d never hiked that far or that high. Not even close.

But this was about more than hiking.

It was part of my grand, I’m-not-sure-about-this retirement strategy. After more than 40 years as an accountant, I’d traded my desk for an RV and was trying something I’d never done before.

When I decided to start camping, I told people I didn’t know whether I’d last a month or ten years.

It had now been one month of camping. Exactly. Mount Le Conte was going to be my test.

Could I really do this?

There was only one way to find out, so I took my first step.

The skies were blue as I crossed the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River. The trail ran beside Alum Cave Creek. It was a beautiful, pleasant, gentle early-October walk for that first mile.

I could handle that.

I passed through Arch Rock, a natural passage tunneled through the rock, with stairs built by the Park Service inside. I had no objection to using them.

Then the trail began climbing. Like a toddler wanting to be picked up, it became more insistent about getting up higher.

Another mile brought me to Alum Cave Bluff, which isn’t actually a cave. It’s a seventy-five-foot-tall overhang that provides shelter from rain and shade from the summer sun.

That morning, it was in shade mode.

It was a good place to stop, look around, and decide whether I really wanted to continue. The sky had changed. Large cumulus clouds sailed overhead, playing peek-a-boo with the early-morning blue.

I could turn around and call it a day.

It was tempting, but I had a goal. And if I couldn’t reach this one, I wondered what that might say about the much bigger goals I had set for my retirement.

So I kept climbing.

I stopped several times, taking in the green expanses. There were touches of yellow and orange that foreshadowed autumn in the mountains of East Tennessee, but mostly there were variations on a dark, late-summer green theme.

Then I came to a spot where the path narrowed, and the edge seemed likely to give way beneath my feet.

I stopped, reevaluating my plans for the day. It was no more than 15 feet across this section, but it felt like it would be 15,000 feet down if I fell.

Then I noticed a metal cable anchored to the cliff. I wondered who had put it there and why.

I didn’t wonder long. A few hikers coming up behind me grabbed the cable and simply waltzed across the narrow section.

Youngsters in their fifties can be such showoffs.

Taking the hint, I grabbed the cable and followed them. Slowly. Without the waltzing.

I know some of you good hikers are shaking your heads right now. I understand. But remember, I was new at this. I was learning as I went. And that was really what retirement was turning out to be. I was learning as I went.

As I climbed higher, the clouds thickened until the blue disappeared altogether. Near the top, the trail flattened, and suddenly I was enveloped in fog.

My world shrank to about twenty feet. Everything beyond that disappeared.

It was strangely beautiful. I was walking along a narrow, green pathway with the mist graying out everything beyond it.

I stopped and took it in. I’d hiked all the way up into the clouds. Maybe not literally, but certainly figuratively.

I was on cloud nine.

Or at least inside it.

A few steps later, the Le Conte Lodge appeared out of the fog as if it had been hiding there, waiting for me. It was eerily quiet, almost like an abandoned ghost town.

I found a bench and sat down. My legs were tired, and I’d worked up an appetite, so I pulled a snack from my backpack.

I’d made it.

The cabins were rustic. They didn’t have electricity or running water. Kerosene lamps gave light at night. Heat came from propane stoves. Flush toilets were available only near the main building. I’d heard dinner and breakfast were family-style at set times in the dining hall, but not lunch.

Which may explain why no one was around.

I kept looking and finally found someone cleaning in the main hall, but no one else was around. I left without saying a word, not wanting to disturb the silence, and perhaps a little too shy to say anything anyway.

I’d reached the top, but I wasn’t finished. After a bathroom break, I started down.

The fog lifted almost as quickly as it had arrived. The clouds lightened. The sky gradually cleared. By the time I reached my car, everything was blue again.

I took off my hiking boots, pleased with my day.

I’d started uncertainly, aiming for something I wasn’t sure I could do. But I hadn’t done it haphazardly. I had practiced with shorter hikes in flatter terrain. I had the right gear. I had a map. I had an objective.

And with all that, what had once seemed like a crazy idea had become doable. Maybe my wild retirement plans were possible after all.

I’d risked failure. I might still fail. But if I never risked failure, I would never succeed either.

So, putting my everyday shoes back on, I decided my camping days weren’t going to end after one month. I was ready for more.

I didn’t know where it would all lead, how long the adventure would last, or what I would discover along the way.

And the biggest thing of all: I had no clue who I would become in the process.

But I knew I was going to keep going one step at a time.

What’s something you’ve started without knowing exactly how it would turn out? Maybe it was retirement, a move, a relationship, a new hobby, a career change, or simply a different way of living. What helped you take that step?

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The shadows had moved.

I was hungry, but was that boredom talking, or were my hunger pains real? I had no way of knowing. I was sitting in a one-room cabin with no computer, no phone, and no watch, and I’d already lost track of time.

It had only been an hour since I peeled off my watch.

Or was it two?

I’d come to the cabin for a three-night retreat, expecting silence to be difficult enough. I hadn’t planned to remove my watch, but I did. It left me feeling untethered. Hours and minutes usually ruled my world, but suddenly they had no meaning.

Clock time was on hiatus.

Of course, time itself hadn’t stopped. The earth continued to turn. Somewhere, people were sitting in meetings, checking watches, hurrying to the next appointment, and wondering why the person ahead of them in traffic couldn’t drive.

But in that cabin, clock time had disappeared. That distinction was one I’d never considered before.

Cookie and I went for a walk. She seemed unfazed. Her sense of time appeared to consist of three basic questions: Is it time to eat? To walk? Or to sleep? Otherwise, she didn’t seem to care.

I did.

I looked at the sky and tried to do the mental math. If the sun were halfway down toward the horizon on a twelve-hour day, there’d be about three hours of sunlight left. But this was August. The day was longer. The sun was seven-eighths of the way down. Or maybe three-fourths. I was trying to calculate the time from the sun’s angle, as if I were part of the crew of a 17th-century sailing ship.

Then I stopped.

I was trying to squeeze time back into a clock mold, and it couldn’t be done. Clocks need the concept of time for them to make sense. Time, though, doesn’t need clocks to flow onward.

In a way, time is timeless, without hours and minutes.

I took a slow, deep breath and simply stood there. I quieted my soul and listened. I felt the soft breeze on my face. I noticed the shades of green and the birds singing in the treeline behind the cabin. I noticed the clouds floating above and the tall grass swaying in the field to my right.

Key word: noticed.

That sounds like a small thing, but it’s not something I do nearly enough.

I stopped to look more closely at the little tree in front of the cabin. It was lopsided, one of its branches sawn off, a wound in time that would never unwind. Its leaves identified it as a peach tree, but there weren’t any peaches.

So I looked down.

There I saw several peach pits scattered on the ground. I’d walked past that tree several times in the unloading process without ever seeing them. I was beginning to realize how much of life I move through without actually noticing it.

I’m busy. I have places to go and things to do. My calendar tells me where I need to be and when I need to be there. I push time around as if it were another item to check off a To-Do list.

I focus on the destination, not the journey. Without a watch, I was becoming more aware of the journey.

Back inside, the fading sunlight came through the slats in the blinds and slowly moved across the floor. It was a tangible demonstration that the day was progressing toward night. No notification appeared on my phone. The light simply moved. My hunger reminded me it really was time for dinner.

Eventually, night came. And with it came a new problem. When do you go to bed if you don’t know what time it is? I had no idea when I should go to sleep or when I should get up. All I could do was listen to my body, sleep when I was sleepy, and get up when I wasn’t.

The sun would do the same.

The next morning, Cookie and I went outside to watch the sunrise. The high hills to the east delayed its arrival, further scrambling my internal clock.

Two roosters crowed back and forth on a farm down near the main road.

Good! That helped in the beginning.

But they kept crowing past noon, completely messing me up again. Those roosters had an understanding of time I’d never run across before.

When the sun did finally appear above the hills, I used it as a rough clock. It set the tempo for my day, but the song it played was marked ritardando, slowing down as the hours passed.

By the end of that first full day, time felt slower.

Or perhaps I felt slower.

Sunset arrived slowly and left quickly. Nighttime slipped softly over the horizon behind me, catching me by surprise.

My second morning began with storms that kept the cabin dark, masking the passage of time. There were no shadows to tell me whether it was morning, midday, or something in between.

And surprisingly, I didn’t care. Something inside me was adapting.

A day without time has more time in it.

Not literally, of course. Twenty-four hours is still twenty-four hours. But without constantly measuring those hours, I experienced them differently.

I could sit for long stretches and simply be still.

Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

I’d read those words many times. In that cabin, I was beginning to understand what stillness might actually look like.

The passing of time was the same. I was what was different.

I was no longer trying to swim ahead of time, dam it up, or hold it back. I was floating downstream with it.

The question that had dominated the beginning of my retreat - What time is it? - gradually lost its importance.

The late-afternoon shadows on the second full day grew longer, then seemed to race toward the final sunset. Night would soon cover the cabin again, and once again I would have no indication of how much time had passed while I slept.

Whenever I woke that night, I’d wonder: Is it time to get up, or should I go back to sleep?

The answer was found by listening to my body and adapting my schedule to its rhythms, not the clock’s.

The next morning was my last. I got up before sunrise and wondered how long I would have to wait for the sun.

But I wasn’t in a hurry.

I could sit and simply wait. I didn’t have to know whether sunrise was eight minutes away or thirty-eight. I could just be there when it happened.

Time had become less something I managed and more something I accepted. I was seeing it as a partner rather than an enemy, an ally rather than a foe. It had weight and substance apart from deadlines and appointments. It was almost as if I could feel its currents.

Then I went home. My watch went back on my wrist. The clocks went back to doing their jobs. My calendar filled up again. Nothing about the external world had changed.

But something in me had, and this is what it is: I’m experiencing time more and measuring it less.

I’m leaving more space between commitments, so I’m less inclined to be thinking about the next thing before I’ve finished experiencing the present one.

Sometimes I take off my watch before a meeting. I want to focus on the person I’m with rather than wondering how much time we have left. Our time together will take as long as it takes.

People are more important than schedules anyway.

I take off my watch when I stroll through my neighborhood. Without it, I’m less inclined to turn a walk into another task to be completed. I pray. I notice things. I look around.

I might even notice a mushroom that wasn’t there the day before.

There are times when I still watch the minutes, of course. If I have an appointment, I don’t want to be late. Someone else’s time is just as important as mine.

I’m not trying to escape time or pretend that schedules don’t matter. I’m trying to put them in their proper place. When I catch myself asking, “What time is it?” I try to follow it with:

What’s going on right now? Or: What’s God doing in this moment?

Those questions pull me away from measuring time and toward experiencing the moment.

I can’t say I accomplished anything during those three days in the cabin. I didn’t check anything off a list. I didn’t produce anything. I didn’t even know what time it was.

But I began to understand that I don’t necessarily need more time in a day. What I need instead is to experience more of the moments I already have.

Maybe time doesn’t actually slow down when we stop counting minutes. Maybe we do. And maybe that’s where extra time comes from.

So, let’s all try to live in the moment, not the minute.

Perhaps that’s the invitation: not to abandon clocks or schedules, but to let them occupy their proper place. There will always be appointments to keep and minutes to watch. But there will also be moments worth noticing along the way. And perhaps the Senior Road is not so much about getting somewhere on time as it is about being present for the miles God has given us.

That seems worth noticing.

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This morning I’m feeling a tad lonely.

I know it’s just a passing moment, only vaguely related to the all-consuming loneliness I knew for several years. Still, it’s a curious feeling because I thought I’d left loneliness behind three years ago. And, for the most part, I have. But every now and then something stirs it up.

I’m not entirely sure what did it this time. Maybe it was dinner last night with a friend and our wishful thinking about relationships. Maybe it was the aftermath of a few days with family. Maybe it was the recently announced engagement of a good friend, or adjusting to my new dwelling place on my own. Or perhaps it’s simply September, and the anniversary of Lori’s death hanging over my emotions as it does every year.

Sometimes I’m worse than a teenager, waves of emotion coming and going. Only now I’m without the excuse of raging hormones. At least I’ve outgrown the need to soak everyone around me in those waves.

Whatever the cause, I’m feeling wistful. Part of me still wants companionship. I’d even be willing to endure the disruptions that come with adjusting to someone new in my life.

But there’s an important difference between that feeling today and what I experienced after Lori died.

Back then, I felt alone.

Really, no kidding alone. An astronaut floating away into the void of space alone. Forever alone. Never again would I have someone to come home to, go to a movie with, or drive me crazy.

The world had gone quiet. My whole life felt empty. I missed her so badly that she was all I could think about. To feel alone was to be keenly aware that the one and only person I wanted next to me was not there.

I spent two and a half years stuck in that mindset before it changed. And the only reason it changed then was that someone new came along who made me start thinking about dating again.

I never expected that. I didn’t want it. I certainly didn’t plan for it. But my heart apparently had plans of its own.

Unfortunately, the story didn’t end happily ever after. I liked her a lot, but she didn’t like me at all. So we never even dated. That’s a fairly common occurrence for those of us who are “twos” on the ten-point attractiveness scale.

Still, something changed during that season. The logjam inside me broke, and my heart began riding the flood downstream.

The impossibility of being with Lori again had made me feel alone. The possibility of new love made me feel lonely.

Those are not the same thing.

I’d gone from dreaming of one more romantic dinner with my wife to wanting dinner with any available attractive woman I met.

Talk about regressing to my teenage years.

Loneliness led me actively to look for someone to date. I wanted to fill the hole so I could get past the loneliness consuming me. I wasn’t trying to replace Lori. No one could ever do that. I just wanted someone to spend my senior years with, someone I could love in a new and special way. Someone who would love me back.

Was that too much to ask?

For the next three years, I dated here and there, with no lasting success. I was never particularly good with people, especially women.

By this point, I’d been on my own for five years.

Then loneliness acquired another dimension. I began to feel lonesome.

If being alone was about missing Lori, and being lonely was about wanting romantic love, lonesomeness was broader. I wanted friendship. Male friendship. Female friendship. People to spend time with.

I was lonely and lonesome at the same time.

That was hard to deal with, still traveling full-time in an RV. After four years on the road, I decided to stop camping and returned to the old family place in Tennessee. There, things began to change.

I built community. I made friends. I dated a little. The friendship part worked out considerably better than the romantic part, which probably comes as no surprise.

I see you nodding in agreement.

Then, nine months after I stopped camping, I was sitting at home on a Sunday afternoon when I realized something remarkable.

I wasn’t lonely anymore. I wasn’t lonesome, either. And I definitely didn’t feel alone.

I was content.

That was three years ago now, and it’s still true. I have a good life and lots of friends. And even without a wife, my relationship with God is intimate and constant enough to assuage my longings for companionship.

Mostly.

So, that “mostly” is what gets me to where I am today, feeling a tad lonely. Call it a low-grade loneliness fever that’ll dissipate with some aspirin and a good night’s sleep.

Contentment doesn’t mean I never wish someone were sitting across the dinner table from me. It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t enjoy sharing life with a woman who shares my Christian values. And it doesn’t mean I couldn’t imagine enjoying a relationship without knowing where it might lead.

But those desires are tempered by the realism that comes with age and a few failed attempts at romance.

Besides, I don’t feel a need for someone at my side to make me feel complete like I once did.

So when loneliness visits for a morning, like today, I don’t have to panic. I don’t have to fix it. I don’t have to go searching for someone to fill a hole in my life.

Maybe contentment isn’t the absence of any longing at all. It’s the ability to live at peace with it.

So, yes, I’m feeling a tad lonely this morning.

But I’m okay.

Mostly.

Maybe you’ve experienced some version of this yourself. Perhaps you’ve been alone without feeling lonely, or surrounded by people and still felt lonesome. Maybe you’ve discovered, as I have, that being content doesn’t necessarily mean every longing has disappeared.

And perhaps that is where we leave this one: not with a tidy answer, but with room for things unresolved. Life rarely ties everything up quite as neatly as we’d like.

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I was running for my life.

At least that’s what it felt like.

I’d been running for about 50 yards, my heart pounding. My pursuers were right behind me. I looked over my shoulder, hoping I’d finally gained some space, but I hadn’t.

There were more of them chasing me than when I started. The sand was slowing me down. Every step felt like running in place. If I could just reach my car and get inside, I’d be able to drive away and leave them behind forever.

Let me pause the story right here and tell you that everything I just wrote is true. It really happened to me.

I was running. I was being chased. I was desperate to escape, but I’ve left out a key piece of information that you’ll just have to wait to figure out until after I’ve set the scene.

For now, let’s say the chase was just another part of a normal day during my four-year camping adventure. This time I was in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Although “normal” might be stretching the definition a little.

My day began peacefully at sunrise on Whitefish Bay. The name might sound familiar if you remember the song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

“Does anyone know where the love of God goes

When the waves turn the minutes to hours?

The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay

If they’d put fifteen more miles behind her.”

Fifteen miles northwest of Whitefish Point, the Edmund Fitzgerald sank one stormy November night fifty years ago. It was a true story later turned into a classic folk-rock ballad by Gordon Lightfoot. Today, the lighthouse at Whitefish Point houses the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, where exhibits about the Edmund Fitzgerald are the main attraction.

Dawn on the Bay was a peaceful, easy way to begin a day that would eventually turn into a mad dash for safety.

After I’d taken my fill of pictures that morning, I drove back through the little town of Paradise to my campsite at Tahquamenon Falls State Park.

Tahquamenon Falls is actually several waterfalls, known for their unusual rusty-brown water. Some people describe them as root-beer-colored because the rushing water creates a thick white foam, like root beer. The color comes from tannins leached from the swamps the river passes through.

The falls and the state park sit in a remote area of the Upper Peninsula. Of course, the whole U.P. could be described as remote. It’s not exactly a place you accidentally pass through. You go there on purpose or not at all.

Fittingly, the campground had no cell phone service, and to give you an idea of the isolation, the nearest McDonald’s (not that I frequent them) was 50 miles away. The closest restaurant was in Paradise, and once a week a food truck came to the little town selling the U.P. version of fish and chips.

That’s fish plus a bag of chips.

After returning from Whitefish Bay, I rode my bike around the campground because there wasn’t anywhere else nearby I felt comfortable riding. Twenty miles of riding in circles isn’t exactly exciting cycling, but it was exercise, and even boring exercise beats no exercise.

But since I was bored, I stopped in the middle of my ride to talk with a family that had just emerged from a trail into the campground.

Actually, curiosity had more to do with it than boredom.

The way they were dressed, they looked like a family of beekeepers. Papa beekeeper, Mama beekeeper, and two younger beekeepers. Everyone wore broad-brimmed hats with nets pulled over them, completely covering their faces and necks. Their pant legs were tucked into their shoes, and they wore long sleeves and gloves.

This was not typical summer hiking attire, so I had to ask.

Papa beekeeper explained that they dressed this way because the flies and mosquitoes on the trails would eat them alive if they didn’t. He added, tongue in cheek, that the little ones were in danger of being carried away by the big ones.

Now, I already knew the mosquitoes seemed bigger and more persistent than the ones I’d encountered elsewhere. I could almost imagine a squadron of U.P. mosquitoes carrying off a small Chihuahua, but the mosquitoes hadn’t bothered me that morning on my bike ride.

The Beekeepers insisted, however, that the flies were worse than the mosquitoes and that they, too, could bite. I’d seen flies around my campsite, but they were more of an annoyance than a threat. I had screens on my windows, and any flies that made it inside my camper met a quick end in the confined space.

The flies I’d encountered didn’t bite. The Beekeeper family’s story seemed like a bit of Upper Peninsula exaggeration, a local version of an urban legend.

After a shower and lunch, I headed out to explore the eastern side of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, unaware that my own scramble for safety and legend lay ahead.

My first stop was Sable Falls, a 75-foot waterfall near Grand Marais. The name is pronounced with a short “a,” rhyming with “cobble.” The walk to the falls included 168 steps down and, as the sign helpfully (and obviously) warned, 168 steps back up.

I climbed back to my car and prepared to move on.

That’s when two young men got out of their car, walked over, and asked, “Were there any flies at the falls?”

It was a strange question from two jittery, wild-eyed strangers, but the answer was no.

“Good,” one said. “We’re trying to avoid them.”

What was this fetish with flies around here?

“We never want to be around flies again,” they added.

That got my attention.

They explained that the night before they had camped beside Lake Superior, and flies had been everywhere. They were on their food, their tent, and them. They couldn’t get rid of them, even inside the tent. That morning, they packed up and left without breakfast because, as they put it, the flies would have eaten more than they did.

They named the campsite, and while I had never heard of it, their sincerity made me reconsider the warnings I’d dismissed earlier.

Maybe this wasn’t an urban legend after all. So, I drove on to the Log Slide Overlook at Lake Superior thinking about flies.

The Log Slide sits atop the Grand Sable Dunes, 175 feet above Lake Superior. From there, you can see the lake, the shoreline, and the Au Sable Lighthouse several miles to the west.

In the 1890s, loggers built a wooden chute from the top of the dune to the lake. Logs could make the trip in about ten seconds. The friction created enough heat that fires occasionally started, earning the slide the nickname The Devil’s Slide.

The parking lot was empty, and I walked the quarter-mile trail alone toward the top of the dune. The first part of it was easy. The last half was sand, making each step a little harder.

I reached the opening, looked out over Lake Superior, and admired the view.

For about three seconds. That’s when it happened.

The flies attacked. Yes, flies. The legend was real.

My pursuers in the opening paragraphs were flies. Millions of flies.

Okay. Maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement.

But there were so many in that moment that there was no time for pictures. No time to enjoy the scenery. No time to appreciate the place’s history.

Just time enough to run.

So, I run.

A scrawny old guy running as fast as he can, slow motion in the sand, frantically waving his arms, screaming at the flies, dodging the onslaught, holding onto his hat they were trying to carry away, tripping over his feet, and doing his best OJ Simpson impression to outrun the swarm.

After 100 yards that seemed like a mile, they were still trying to get at me, doing kamikaze dives on my neck and arms. I dodged and swatted as best I could, but they were persistent little things.

When I reached the packed gravel halfway back, I sped up. Uphill. Around the corner. Toward the car.

They were still with me.

I jumped inside, slammed the door, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Until I realized I wasn’t alone. Several flies were still buzzing around my head.

Driving away, I opened the windows and started counting as the rushing air carried them away.

One.

Two.

Three.

I started itching. They hadn’t just chased me. They’d bitten me. No wonder I felt attacked. The flies in Tennessee seem much more civilized. They leave the biting to the mosquitoes.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Six flies had followed me all the way into my car.

Of course, there must have been six hundred to begin with, and this time I’m not exaggerating.

Later, I learned that the Upper Peninsula has different varieties of flies than I was used to. Black flies appear in late spring and early summer, while stable flies show up later in the season. Both are capable of biting.

Since I was there in July, I’m not sure which ones attacked me.

I just know I never want to meet them again.

I abandoned my plans to explore more of Pictured Rocks that afternoon. Instead, I returned to my camper, scratched my wounds, kept my flyswatter nearby, and hoped I didn’t look as traumatized as the two young men I’d met earlier.

Maybe I should have ordered a beekeeper suit from Amazon after all because sometimes legends in the backwoods of the Upper Peninsula are true.

As always, the best travel stories are rarely the ones we plan. They’re the ones that surprise us, humble us, and give us something to laugh about later. On the road—and in life—there are usually a few unexpected turns waiting just beyond the next bend.

The journey continues, one unexpected story at a time.

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He had big, strong hands.

He was 97 and a good friend. We met regularly for a couple of years. During that time, we came to know and like each other. His story spanned more years than I can quite imagine. He had children my age, many grandchildren, and 24 great-grandchildren.

His name was John. He was quite a man with quite a story, and he loved his wife and his Lord with all his heart. I can think of no better way to describe any man than that.

Earlier this year, on a whim, I decided I wanted a picture of the two of us shaking hands, but just a picture of our hands. I already had a photograph of John that I’d taken the year before. This one would serve as a reminder of our friendship. At 97, you don’t assume there will always be a next week.

I suppose we shouldn’t at any age.

I was pretty sure John would agree to my small request, though I still felt a little silly about it. So I began by asking permission to take a picture of his hands. A little amused and confused, he agreed.

At first, he held his warm cup of coffee, a familiar pose for him, as we talked. But that didn’t feel quite right, so I asked him to set the cup aside. He did, laying his hands close together on the table. That was better, but still not what I was looking for.

I paused and looked at his hands. I thought of the stories he had told me about his beloved Nancy and wished I had a picture of them holding hands. But she was gone, and since he couldn’t hold her hand, I asked if he would simply clasp his own.

And he did. His hands rested on the table, one loosely cupping the other, well manicured, still wearing his wedding ring.

That posture said something about him. He was relaxed, patient, and strong. He was attentive to detail and comfortable in his own skin. He could listen well, pray regularly, and drift easily into memories of his Nancy.

Her loss was what had brought us together one Sunday morning. A friend introduced us and told me John had lost his wife only a few months earlier.

I shook his hand, expressed sympathy for his loss, and asked, “How long were you married?”

“Seventy-four years,” he answered.

I was floored. I thought I’d misheard him. “Seventy-four years?”

Yes. Seventy-four years.

John was 95 when we met. We’d both experienced the same kind of pain. His was fresher, but mine was still present, just camouflaged by time. On that matter, he was older, but I was more practiced in navigating grief.

We began meeting weekly for coffee at Panera. Coffee for him, water for me. We told each other stories about our wives and our lives, trading tales of both happy and hard times. He was good for me - a mentor in my aging years, a companion in my sorrow.

I hope I was good for him.

His father had immigrated from Hungary in the early 1900s and served in the US Army before World War I. John was born in 1928 in the Philippines while his father was stationed there.

After a tour back in the States, his father was assigned to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. In the summer of 1941, when John was thirteen, his father retired, and the family moved back to Minnesota, just months before the Japanese attack in December.

John tried to join the Army after high school in 1946, but his eyesight wasn’t good enough. He memorized the eye chart to try to pass, but they changed the chart before his turn, and he failed.

He was a swimmer in high school in Minneapolis and met his wife at a church youth camp. They married after she graduated from high school.

He attended the University of Minnesota for a time, majoring in forestry, but Nancy didn’t want to live deep in the woods, so he left.

After a stint as an assistant anatomical embalmer at the University of Minnesota medical school (no experience required), he went on to a long career at Honeywell. After retirement, he and Nancy traveled extensively. When he was 93, they made the courageous decision to leave Minneapolis and start over near family in Tennessee. They moved into assisted living, where they lived until she died.

One last time, he had to start over, but without his Nancy by his side this time. That’s when I met him.

He still drove himself to Panera every morning and to church on Sundays. He arrived early on Sunday mornings. Always early. He had his seat. People knew him. He had a big fan club there.

As you’ve probably discerned by my use of the past tense, my friend John has died.

I was able to visit him the afternoon before. His eyes lit up when he saw me. He smiled. Said something I couldn’t quite catch. I told him that was all right. I’d do the talking that day.

I held his hand and told him about my trip to Iceland. I looked down at those hands again, remembering that day in February when I’d asked to photograph them. These hands felt different. Still large. Still strong. But something was loosening, his grip on this world relaxing.

Soon, the hand I was holding would be placed into the hands of Jesus - his Savior, and mine too.

I said goodbye and left before the tears that would soon come caught up with me.

I miss him. He was more than a friend.

He was a model for me to follow, someone I wanted to emulate. He showed me how to age well, how to grow older with honor and strength intact, and yet still remain patient, kind, and loving.

He showed me that aging well is not about defying time. It’s about remaining open - still forming friendships, still telling stories, still showing up. Still beginning again when you think you might just be done.

That day I took the photograph, I never did get around to a picture of us shaking hands. Turns out the picture of his hands was the one I was really after. I just didn’t know it when I started. That is the picture that will always remind me of my friend John.

He had such big, strong, loving hands.

If you’ve known someone who quietly shaped your understanding of aging, friendship, or faith, I’d be interested in hearing about them.

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Fog and drizzle followed me as I drove from sea level up into the mountains on a road I’d never been on before. The higher I climbed, the worse it got. The road lost its shoulders along the way, forcing me to slow down even more.

I was also getting reacquainted with driving a stick shift. It had been twenty-five years since I’d last done that. The good news was that, like riding a bicycle, it mostly came back to me.

Mostly.

As I crested the pass, not expecting much beyond more fog and drizzle, I glanced down the valley to my left and stared in amazement. A rainbow filled the sky.

Actually, that’s not quite right.

A rainbow dominated the sky. It stretched from the blue skies far below me to the gray clouds surrounding me. It was so striking that my attention kept drifting away from the road. The lane-departure warning in my rental car sounded more than once, reminding me that admiring scenery and driving are supposed to be two separate things.

If a place ever deserved a stop for a photograph, this was it. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to pull over. No shoulder. No overlook. No farmer’s driveway. Nothing.

So I kept driving, letting the colors and spectacle settle into my memory. The rainbow’s beauty felt like a quiet reminder of God’s promises.

As I slipped down into the valley, another rainbow took its place. It wasn’t as spectacular as the first, but even ordinary rainbows make you look. Eventually, I found a place to stop at a farmer’s field and took a picture.

I was driving Iceland’s Ring Road, which circles an island roughly the size of Kentucky with a population of only about 400,000. Large stretches of the country remain empty and undeveloped.

So when I say there was nowhere to pull over, I mean there was literally nowhere. For miles.

That was okay because the wide-open spaces and long stretches of empty road fit my mood.

I was in Iceland alone and wasn’t looking to meet people. I simply needed a break. As an introvert, I find that people drain my energy. Solitude restores it. Iceland was a very good place to be alone.

But eventually I do recharge, and I’m ready to be social again. After enough quiet, I begin looking for people. It took me until my fourth night in Iceland before I felt ready.

That’s when I met Mia.

To better understand how that happened, you need to know where I was staying. I don’t require four-star accommodations, so I chose less expensive options throughout the trip. That meant sharing bathrooms, kitchens, and common areas every night.

I know that’s already a bridge too far for many of you, but I spent four years in campgrounds doing similar things, so it didn’t bother me.

But it gets worse.

Two nights, I stayed in a hostel - an old guy hiding in plain sight among the young. Our room had three bunk beds, meaning I slept in the same room with five other people. Trust me, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounds.

The place I liked best, however, wasn’t even a room. It was a pod in Reykjavik, barely more than a bed you crawled into, which I found surprisingly comfortable and quiet. I chose a lower pod the first night and then the upper when I returned. Apparently, I’m still optimistic about nighttime ladder climbing, which, at my age, I definitely had to do.

For me, the sleeping arrangements were simply part of the adventure.

Now back to Mia. I bet you’re dying to hear about her.

She came along at the right time. I was ready to start interacting with people again. We were both staying in a guesthouse near Lake Mývatn that had four bedrooms, two shared bathrooms, and a kitchen.

She was a cute little blonde with a smile warm enough to melt the snow falling outside. When she saw me, she came right over. That sort of thing doesn’t normally happen to me with girls. But it did with Mia.

We hit it off right away. We were both from the States - she from Colorado and I from Tennessee. Before long, she was in my arms, and I found myself wishing I had more than one night there.

Then again, Mia was leaving in the morning as I was.

I had a reservation waiting for me in Hofn on Iceland’s southeast coast and wasn’t sure where she was headed.

Neither was she.

You see, Mia was twenty months old, and she’d go wherever her parents took her.

I suppose I should explain the rest of the story.

I was sitting in my room, looking at the empty bed beside mine and wishing Lori were there to share the adventure when I heard an upset child. After a few minutes, curiosity (or maybe it was nosiness) got the better of me.

I opened the door. I could hear Mia’s mother at the stove around the corner.

Little Mia saw me and stopped making noise. I crouched down to her level, smiled, said hello, and motioned for her to come over.

She did. Without hesitation

Naturally, her mother soon followed.

I asked permission before picking her up. No parent wants a stranger scooping up their child uninvited. Fortunately, her mother looked me over, noted the white hair, and apparently decided I was harmless and unlikely to escape quickly.

She was correct on both counts.

I carried Mia back into the kitchen behind her mom and talked with her for a while. That’s when I learned they were from the Denver area. Her mother told me Mia didn’t normally warm up to strangers so quickly.

I explained that I spend Sunday mornings at church working with children her age. Maybe she sensed that.

When dinner was ready, our brief friendship came to an end. Before I put her down, Mia hugged me.

It was a small thing. But sometimes small things arrive at exactly the right moment to remind us what’s important in life.

I returned to my room smiling, feeling a little less alone and a little more connected to the world around me.

Mia ate mac ’n cheese that night. I had freshly caught fish and chips. The diet in Iceland has more seafood and lamb than that of a typical American.

In addition to the fish and chips (twice), I ate fish jerky, mashed fish, and an amazing baked cod with white sauce and caviar.

I ate lamb soup, lamb shank, and a surprisingly good lamb hamburger.

And hot dogs. Don’t forget the hot dogs. In Iceland, they’re lamb-based.

To add variety, I skeptically tried the black crust pizza in Vik. The crust looked thoroughly burned, but it definitely wasn’t. It was delicious.

My favorite culinary surprise was rye bread ice cream. My least favorite, fermented shark.

The shark smelled and tasted as though someone had soaked it in kerosene and smelling salts for six months. It was pungent, unforgettable, and difficult to describe.

I didn’t say it was good.

But it was so interesting, I would eat it again.

The morning after meeting Mia, I woke to find the ground white. Snow in northern Iceland, fifty miles from the Arctic Circle, in late May isn’t unheard of, but it isn’t common either. The roads remained clear, but my planned route crossed eastern Iceland and the exposed southeastern coastline. The Icelandic Meteorological Office had issued warnings for snow and high winds in that area.

Travel requires flexibility.

I had three options. I could continue and hope for the best. I could stay put and wait for conditions to improve. Or I could turn around, drive back to Reykjavik, and reconnect with my itinerary later.

The first option seemed risky for someone my age who was unfamiliar with Icelandic roads. The second sounded boring. So I chose the third. The decision added hours of driving, but at least I’d be driving in better weather.

As I headed west, I skipped a mountain pass near Akureyri that I’d crossed the day before and instead took a tunnel through the mountain.

What a tunnel it was. Nearly five miles long, one lane in each direction, and emergency pull-off areas scattered throughout.

Soon, I noticed I needed my windshield wipers.

Inside the tunnel.

At first, I assumed water was dripping from the ceiling. Then I realized melting snow from my own car was blowing back onto the windshield in the warmer air underground. That’s a problem I’d never encountered before.

Eventually, I made it safely back to Reykjavik, found street parking on a Friday night, and spent an unplanned night sleeping in a pod. I resumed my original itinerary the next night at a hostel near Vik in southern Iceland.

Since returning home, the question I’ve been asked most often, other than who snored the loudest in the hostel, is whether I saw the northern lights. The answer is no, I didn’t, because it never got dark enough.

The sun set around 11:30 p.m. and rose again roughly three hours later. In between, it remained just below the horizon, creating a very long twilight rather than darkness.

During the trip, I visited volcanic craters, ocean cliffs, fjords, black sand beaches, glaciers, geysers, churches, an ice cave, and a puffin island.

And lots of waterfalls. Big impressive waterfalls and little everyday waterfalls. All that rain and snow must eventually find its way to the Ocean.

That means there are more stories to tell, but I’m running out of space and probably testing your patience, so you’ll just have to ask me when you see me.

I’d definitely like to see Iceland in winter someday and finally catch the northern lights. But when I think about the trip I just finished, what I remember first isn’t a glacier, a waterfall, or even that spectacular rainbow.

It’s Mia.

The scenery was unforgettable. But the people I met, like Mia, Heggy, Storm, and Murray, were even better.

Traveling alone gives you plenty of time to admire the landscape, but if that’s all you do, you’re missing out. Moments of shared connection - a smile, a conversation, a little hug - those are what stay with you the longest.

If you’ve ever traveled alone, what unexpected person, conversation, or moment became part of the story you brought home?

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Lori and I built the house I live in forty years ago. We chose the colors and options and watched it take shape from the ground up. It was where we raised our children. In it, we laughed and cried, loved and survived, celebrated and mourned. It was our home.

After forty years, it’s time to try to sell it.

That’s a decision many people my age eventually face, a practical one that slowly becomes unavoidable. It’s not an easy decision, but my house is just too big for one person. Half of it sits empty. All of it requires upkeep.

The hardest part, for someone my age, is the layout. All the bedrooms and my bath are upstairs. That didn’t matter much for forty years, but it does now. I still handle stairs easily, but I can feel that ability changing with time. It’s better to deal with a looming problem than wait until I can’t.

We thought this would be our forever home, the place we’d grow old together. A funny thing happened on the way to forever. A new job forced us to move in 2009, but we didn’t want to sell our house. So, we left it in the care of our grown son and used it as a base when we returned to Nashville.

For a season, we lived in East Tennessee, in a small house that matched the small town where I worked. Over time, that place began to feel like home. I suppose that’s how it happens. Anywhere you return to night after night slowly earns that name.

Then another job took us to Tampa. We would go back to Nashville for holidays and special events, and Lori would make extra visits. I would miss her when she did that. The place in Tampa just didn’t feel right without her. It was too quiet.

If you were lucky enough to know Lori, you know what I mean.

Over time, I noticed something about the word “home.” If Lori was with me in Tampa, I’d say I was going home at the end of the day. But if she was in Nashville, I’d say I was going back to the apartment, not home. I only used “home” when I was returning to her.

I began to realize that for me, home wasn’t the place or the structure. It wasn’t the address either. Home was where I was loved. Home was where Lori was.

So, when she died, I couldn’t seem to find home anywhere.

You might say that grief is nothing more than love looking for a new home.

So, I went looking. I bought an RV and started searching. I traveled the country but kept returning to places we’d been, hoping memory might be enough to spark that feeling of home.

The house we built. The towns we lived in. The places we vacationed. The roads and sights in between. None of them held what I was looking for.

Eventually, I came to understand something more about this idea of home. Lori was gone, but she was still with me. Not in a way I could explain neatly, but in memory and thought, and in the way that makes love grow deeper even though that person is no longer physically here.

And so if home is where love is, then home never actually disappeared, because I carried Lori with me in my heart.

It just stopped being a place.

I could be at home in a camper in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, or in this house where so much of our life unfolded. The location didn’t define home for me anymore.

So, I stopped searching and came back to Tennessee.

A For Sale sign stands in the yard of our old house now. I’ve done my best to make it ready for someone else’s story of finding home.

I’m sad to leave. Every room carries something I don’t want to lose. I remember children growing up, Lori’s laughter, Christmas mornings, friends gathered around the table, the smell of cookies, and the sound of life happening around every corner.

I’m not sure where I’ll land next, but I hope it isn’t far. I’ve built community here, and I don’t want to start over completely. Again.

Of course, it’s possible, maybe even probable, that the house won’t sell. If that happens, I’ll adjust and wait. Then try again in a year or two. The same underlying issues of aging will still remain. It’s not like I’m getting younger with each passing year.

Whenever the sale finally comes, I’ll have sold my house, but not my home. The places where we live matter deeply, but they aren’t what matters most. Love is.

I’d like to hear how your understanding of “home” has changed with time, especially if, like me, life has forced you to redefine it.

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The sand was white, fine, and silky. It was blinding in the sun. Above it, a cloudless sky stretched deep blue, the kind of sky that promises water nearby. An early morning beach day sky.

But as I looked around, all I saw was sand. No water. No shoreline. Just dunes - rolling, shifting, endless. I stood there a moment, surrounded by white, reminded that appearances often mislead.

All the dry sand around me reminded me to hydrate. I stopped, set my backpack down, and found my water bottle. I took a long drink, put it away, and looked around again.

No warning signs. No ropes. No “Stay Off the Dunes” signs like you see in Florida. If there had been, I wouldn’t have been there. I’m too much of a rule follower.

But the Rangers had encouraged me to explore, so that’s what I was doing. As long as I stayed close to the trail, I could wander at random. Wander too far, though, and I could easily get lost if I wasn’t careful.

That morning, I’d stopped at the visitor center at White Sands National Park for a map and some advice, then driven back to where the longest trail began. I laced up my boots and scanned the horizon.

All I could see was white. The road to the trailhead looked like it had been covered in fresh snow. The difference was that the sand didn’t sparkle like snow. It absorbed the light, quietly confident in its own brightness.

Before starting, I double-checked my backpack for water and shifted it into place. Sunglasses. Walking stick. I was ready.

Now, where exactly was that trail?

The Alkali Flat Trail turned out to be neither flat nor much of a trail. And that made sense when I thought about it.

You can’t mark a trail in a place that erases itself every night. There were no trees to blaze, no big rocks to mark. Every evening, the wind reset the landscape, wiping everything clean. By morning, it was as if yesterday had never happened.

So instead, the park had planted bright red guideposts deep into the sand. The rule was simple: walk from marker to marker. If you couldn’t see the next one, don’t go looking for it. That’s how people got lost.

And possibly eaten by giant sandworms. Like in the movies.

Between markers, the route was up to me. Just get there.

That concept meant something to me that morning. I was in my first year of full-time RV travel, newly retired, and everything felt unfamiliar, self-directed, and unmarked. There wasn’t a clear trail ahead, and there weren’t any guarantees.

Others may have gone before me. But I wasn’t following their footsteps

I spotted the first marker near the parking area, then another beyond it. That was enough. I started walking.

A mile and a half in, I stopped for another drink of water. Where I was, down between the dunes, I couldn’t see any markers at all. I knew the general direction I needed to go, but my internal radar, usually dependable, wanted confirmation - some kind of external reassurance.

That meant climbing.

I worked my way up the side of a dune, each step sending small cascades of sand downhill. The loose sand made forward progress optional. It helped to sidestep my way up, like a crab, which is not how I imagined myself hiking that morning.

At the top, I paused and looked around. There it was. A red marker about a hundred feet away, slightly off from where I expected it, but unmistakably the next goal.

How could I get there? Sometimes the best way forward isn’t directly in front of you. I chose a longer path along the dune tops, keeping the marker in sight and not dropping down between dunes where I’d lose it entirely.

The trail looped five miles in a big circle through sand and silence. On the far side were the alkali flats sloping toward the San Andres Mountains and the edge of restricted military territory at the US Army White Sands Missile Range.

There weren’t any fences to keep me out.

Just the ones I’d built in my own mind because I’m a rule follower.

Five years later, an F-16 from nearby Holloman Air Force Base would crash in the park not far from where I stood. The pilot ejected safely. I can only imagine what it would have felt like to be wandering the dunes that day.

Leaving the flats, the trail looped back toward my car, two miles away.

Near the end of my trek, I stopped to admire the wind sculptures one more time. That’s what the dunes really were - forty-foot-tall works of art shaped and reshaped nightly, moving twelve feet a year, constantly being remade.

It would have felt wrong not to pause and take them in.

They were so, so white. In the sun, they were almost mesmerizing. The sand in the dunes isn’t beach sand. It’s gypsum, ancient deposits ground into fine particles and pushed by the wind into fresh forms, over and over again.

I looked back the way I’d come, at the footprints I’d left behind. They’d be gone by morning, wiped clean overnight.

Fleeting.

Like I am.

But there I was, rejoicing in the day.

I can tell you that five miles of dunes is more than five miles of hiking. You can’t go straight from marker to marker without detours, climbs, and drops that add more distance. By the time I finished, I was tired and sandy, ready to sit down.

I pulled off my boots and poured out the sand. Nearby, children were sliding down the dunes on sleds as if it were snow. They laughed, carefree, sledding white hills on a warm March day.

I couldn’t claim to be carefree like them.

But I could say I was having fun, leaving footprints, blazing my own trail on the Senior Road, and letting the wind clean it all up afterward.

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I knew better, and I still got it wrong.

She yelled, “Stop!”

And I stopped - immediately, instinctively, and incorrectly.

But Simon hadn’t said, “Simon says.” Most of the children understood the difference, but not me.

I’d come to Jarabacoa, in the Dominican Republic, with Children’s Relief International to help with childcare while some of the women in our group spoke at a women-only Bible conference. We planned stories, games, and art for the children.

But before we got to the conference, we spent part of our first two mornings with preschoolers at a local school. We did a lesson, a game, and an art project with them. On both days, they heard the story of Jesus turning water into wine, told in two different ways, just to make sure it stuck. I played a small role in a skit, passed out crayons, and tried not to get in the way.

That first morning, we played Simon Says with the little ones. I stood behind Simon, following every command. Meanwhile, most of the children kept messing up when Simon didn’t say, “Simon says.” I have to admit, I felt very grown-up in that moment.

That feeling didn’t last long.

That afternoon, we played again with older students after school, and everything was going fine until the command came: “Simon says, hop on one foot!”

Now, hopping on one foot sounds easy, but it becomes a different experience in your seventies, trying to maintain balance, dignity, and circulation all at the same time. I did my best, hopping and wobbling around like a pirate who’d misplaced his peg leg.

Then came the trap: “Stop!”

And I stopped. Immediately. Completely. Confidently.

But Simon hadn’t said, “Simon says.”

We tried again, and even though I knew exactly what was coming, I fell for it again. I had to stop, or fall over. At some point, you start to wonder if “I can’t help myself” is less of an excuse and more of a diagnosis for getting older.

C’est la vie.

After the games each morning, they turned on the music and danced, and, of course, I wasn’t about to miss a chance to dance with three-year-olds. So, I stood behind the teachers, following along a couple beats late, a goofy old guy, having fun with life. Eventually, you have to stop worrying about whether you look foolish and start realizing that you actually do, and that’s okay.

By Friday night, the conference had begun, and I was caring for children in a covered open-air space with a metal roof and a concrete floor. There were about fifteen children of all ages there, and in one skit, I pretended to be an artist. The challenge wasn’t the role. It was my timing. We spoke in English, which required translation.

My partner would deliver his line, and I’d jump in before somebody had a chance to translate it. More than once. The knowledge that I shouldn’t do that seemed to short-circuit each time, leaving me wondering exactly who this old guy I came with was. Still, we made it through with laughter, and the children seemed to enjoy it.

Next, we played a game with modeling clay and blindfolds, making elephants and spiders, and ended the night drawing with chalk on the concrete floor. I joined them, doing my best artistic work, though I’m not sure anyone would agree on what it was supposed to be. (You can put your guess in the comments.) The rain started as we finished, washing everything away overnight, which felt about right for my artistic contribution.

I’d seen the hopscotch, and after the children left, I decided to give it a try. I made it through without falling (both ways), which felt great, especially after my earlier performance of hopping on one foot. Of course, there weren’t any witnesses, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Saturday, we ended with a game called “What Time Is It, Mr. Fox?” At least, that was the idea. Somewhere along the way, “fox” became “foca,” which in Spanish means “seal.” So instead of being chased by a fox, we were all running from a seal.

We shouted, “¿Qué hora es, Sr. Foca?” like it made perfect sense, and in that moment, it did. Eventually, the seals came for me, and I was quickly surrounded and overrun by laughing children. I didn’t put up much of a fight, though. There are worse ways to lose a game.

After the conference, we headed into town and got caught in a heavy downpour. That didn’t bode well for our ATV plans, but what’s a little mud between friends? So, we went anyway. We had a late afternoon reservation, but the staff hadn’t expected us to show up in the rain, so they weren’t ready. The ATVs had to come from somewhere else, one at a time, and the minutes slowly slipped away.

I wasn’t planning to drive one. I’d been paired with a teammate who made it clear her goal was to make me scream like a little girl.

But I was ready to rise to the occasion and see who screamed first, but we ran out of daylight before we ever got started. In the end, there was no ride, no mud, and no screaming - just the realization that some plans aren’t meant to be.

We cooked most of our meals at the Airbnb, taking turns preparing food and cleaning up. I’m going to tell you something that may surprise you: I cook. Really, I do. But I’d never made egg salad, and more surprisingly, I’d never eaten it before.

I know. I know.

Still, I made it, tried it, and it turned out pretty good.

The real culinary adventure, however, came on Sunday afternoon at a birthday party for one of the preschool teachers. The food was excellent, and I filled my plate with rice and chicken and went back to my seat, enjoying every bite, until I saw it.

My fork froze mid-air. There was a chicken foot on my plate.

Not part of one. The whole thing.

I did a quiet little freak-out, nudging it with my fork just to be sure, but there was no doubt. So, being a good guest, instead of picking up my phone to take a picture, I picked it up and did my best to eat it. The fork wouldn’t have helped. It was mostly skin and bones. It really wasn’t too bad, as long as I didn’t think about what I was eating. I disposed of it as soon as I had the chance.

Some experiences are memorable enough without a second helping.

So, that’s a little taste of my recent trip to the Dominican Republic. There’s more I didn’t include: bonsai trees, a walk through the community, a group art project I led, a party bus, cows and egrets, translators, and even my first sermon at church Sunday night. Our trip was for very serious reasons, but it was also a lot of fun.

I’m learning that joy tends to show up in unplanned moments, the ones where you’re a little off-balance, a step behind, and a little unsure, but laughing anyway. Those are the ones that seem to stick in our memories.

I encourage you to find your own Jarabacoa in this country or another. Leave your comfort zone behind to break away from the ordinary. Sometimes the most meaningful moments come when you simply decide to go.

And eat the chicken feet while you’re there.

LInks:

Light and Grace Ministries in the Dominican Republic

Children's Relief Intl

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When I walk, other people always seem to walk faster. I began to wonder why.

I’m indeed slowing down with age, but there’s more to it than that. I can walk faster. I just choose not to. I’m not in a hurry. I’m strolling.

Strolling is walking slowly, but it’s more than that. It opens our eyes, engages our senses, and takes the focus off ourselves. It’s exercise without strain, movement without urgency. A stroll leaves stress behind one step at a time by getting somewhere aimlessly.

Anyone can do it, but it’s a surprisingly difficult art to master. There’s no formula to follow, no app to download, no watch buzzing. The skills required are already in us. We’ve just neglected them.

Strolling creates something new each time we step outside.

Opportunities are everywhere: our neighborhood, a park, downtown, even in an airport. You can stroll anywhere, but be careful not to walk accidentally.

Walking is about the goal, the destination, the schedule. Strolling is about the journey. It’s giving the world enough time to impress you.

On a stroll, we can go wherever we want. We follow our nose, adjusting our path when something catches our attention. Or we let the wind decide, but then take a detour toward a bird we hear but never quite see. Maybe we stop to talk with a neighbor, or introduce ourselves to a stranger just to learn their name.

A good stroll has a voice of its own if we’re willing to listen.

But pace matters. Speed creates waves that ripple across the landscape, sending wildlife scurrying for cover. Strolling softens our presence. It makes less noise. It invites curiosity instead of alarm.

Deer pause and study us before bounding away. Rabbits watch as we pass, deciding we’re not worth the trouble. At a slower pace, we don’t skim across the surface. We sink in.

A leisurely gait frees us to stop in awe at the ordinary - a leaf on the ground, a distant song, a campfire glowing orange in the dark. The moment sparkles just enough to catch us off guard and put a bounce in our next step.

Done right, strolling lets us stop and admire a single tiny flower, the kind we usually miss because we’re busy looking for something more impressive. Time loosens its grip. Reason takes a short break. And for a moment, we feel like children again.

Strolling exercises the body without wearing it down. There are faster ways to burn calories, but none better for the soul.

It also stretches the imagination. Stories begin to form.

The little girl rushing past is on her way to Grandma’s house. The older man standing on the corner, holding his hat, is remembering the day he proposed to his wife at that very spot. The tree bending over the lake has watched generations of children jump from its branches.

Whether the stories are true doesn’t matter. They wake something up in us.

Our bodies need rest to recover. Strolling is a kind of active rest, a reminder to pause, to slow down, to breathe.

And pausing may be the best part.

We can stop for any reason at all: a purple wildflower, the smell of fried chicken, children playing soccer, or a boat cutting noisily across the lake. When we pause, we give that scene a chance to settle in. We absorb it slowly, marinating in the moment, as if it were truly meant to be remembered.

Because it is.

The snow will melt. Children will grow up. Songs will end. But something of the moment stays with us.

We also pause to steady ourselves, to prepare for what lies ahead. Slowing down isn’t retreat. It’s preparation. We step back into life a little more grounded, a little more ready.

When we slow down, we notice people.

A greeting returned. A wave acknowledged. A smile exchanged. These are small things, but they reconnect us. Smiles have a way of multiplying, for them and for us - a quiet kind of feedback loop.

Most days, we pass people without a thought. We stand next to them in elevators, sit near them in restaurants, walk past them on sidewalks. They are part of the background.

Strolling is the magic trick that turns humans back into people.

And something else shifts. Strolling exists outside of time, or at least outside the tyranny of it. Time becomes elastic. Less demanding. More forgiving.

Even if we set a limit, the minutes behave differently. They stretch. They soften. They stop keeping score. For a little while, we slip into another way of living.

When we stroll, we begin to notice what’s always been there.

Clouds drifting and reshaping themselves overhead. Light changing with the hour - harsh at noon, softer later in the day. Shadows adding depth and drama to the most ordinary things.

We start to see what we’ve been looking past.

Breathe deeply and consider the invisible ocean of air we move through. It has a personality of its own, sometimes harsh and unwelcoming, sometimes gentle and almost tender.

And it shifts with the hour, the season, the light. It rustles leaves, carries smells, and occasionally delivers the unmistakable promise of freshly baked cookies.

It’s always there. We just forget to notice.

So maybe start with a simple walk around the block. Then go again, but slower this time. Let the urgency drop away. Let your pace match your curiosity instead of your schedule.

Pay attention. Notice people. Observe the light. Breathe the air. Take your time.

You might find that the world has been waiting for you to slow down enough to see it. The road ahead will still be there when we’re ready. For now, it’s enough to walk it slowly.

Savor the moment and thank God for life.

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My friend heard a song in me long before I heard anything myself.

We share a lot in common, but we’re completely different people. I’m quiet and reserved. He’s loud and bold. He talks. I don’t. He makes music. I try.

Still, he lets me play guitar and sing without wearing earplugs. If love is blind, sometimes friendship has to be tone-deaf. I only play for him and my youngest grandchildren. They don’t know any better. He does. He’s played the guitar for years, which makes his encouragement either generous…or suspicious.

Now that’s real friendship.

My friend has earned the right to speak into my life, and that can be unsettling at times. I’d rather coast downhill than be challenged to change direction, or heaven forbid, head uphill against the wind.

But he’s an against-the-wind kind of guy.

So when he told me I should write a song, I took him seriously but told him once again that he was crazy. It wasn’t like I’d had an epiphany and suddenly become Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton. I hadn’t taken voice lessons or learned to sing on key. I had no talent, no training, and no timing.

Despite all that, he challenged me to write a song. His explanation: He thought I was a good writer and storyteller, another highly questionable assertion of his.

Why do I listen to him at all?

He theorized that to write a good song, one needs to be a good teller of stories. A song is simply a story set to music. It has a beginning, an end, and something meaningful in between.

Not true, I thought. What about classical music or jazz? And what about songs with meaningless lyrics? Tutti Frutti? Wooly Bully? Da Do Ron Ron? Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da?

You get the idea, and probably a good hint about my age.

Still, the more I thought about what my friend said, the more I realized he might be right about songwriting. Most songs do carry a story beneath the surface, whether we notice it or not.

That still didn’t mean I could write one.

He disagreed.

He saw something I couldn’t see in myself. A musician. A poet. A songwriter holding onto stories of love, loss, and adventure that ought to come out. He was adamant. I could write a song if I tried.

So, since he’s such a good friend, I ignored him.

That’s what you do with nonsense, but my friend had planted a seed, and in the cold days of January, it began to grow. I wrote a few lines, none of them particularly lyrical. I searched for a story worth telling. Nothing quite fit.

So, I gave up. I’d tried, and I couldn’t do it. It was time to move on. Case closed.

Except it wasn’t.

I went away for a spiritual retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani. In prayer, my paradigm of possibilities shifted. Out of the silence, a song began to grow.

I started by putting music to words I’d already written. That was better than writing lyrics alone, but it still didn’t feel quite right. So I changed direction. I tried writing a chorus that was more hopeful and alive.

Hmmm. That was better.

I played around with it, adjusting words, fine-tuning chords, and adding new lines.

I liked how the chorus was shaping up, but a chorus alone isn’t much of a song.

Then nothing else came.

Again.

So I quit.

Again.

For ten days, I avoided the whole idea. I tried to forget. But it lingered. Maybe I was writing about the wrong thing. What story was I supposed to tell instead?

The answer, when it came, was obvious. I needed to tell a Lori story.

I picked up my guitar and started over. This time, the words came easily. Two verses. Then a chorus. A bridge followed a couple of days later. After that, it was mostly refining - moving pieces around, adjusting chords, shaping transitions.

For me, it felt like a kind of completion.

I don’t grieve as deeply as I once did. I made it through those dark years. Telling our story again, but this time in song, feels like another way of letting her go. Not forgetting her. Not moving on in the sense of leaving her behind. But releasing my grip just enough to truly live in the present.

In this song, I’m setting her free and, at the same moment, conceding I’ll always hold her tightly.

I’m sure that doesn’t make sense, but I attempt to stay in that tension between what was and what will never be again, while still living fully today.

So, here are the words:

The Loving Years

Chorus:

You gave me your heart

You gave me your all

The loving years I recall

I gave you my heart

I gave you my all

The loving years,

I recall

Oh, I recall

Verse 1:

When we said forever

I gave my love to you

But now I’m here by myself

Wondering what to do

Verse 2:

To hold you in my arms

And kiss you one more time

To tell you that I love you

And you’ll always be mine

Chorus repeat

Bridge

The years have passed

Cause time won’t last

I had to let you go

But even then

You’ve always been

Sunlight to my soul

You’re in my dreams

Impact my schemes

Just wanted you to know

But the years have passed

And time won’t last

I had to let you go

Verses repeat

Chorus repeat x 2

So now what? Do I have any more songs inside me?

Apparently, I do.

A second song followed, titled “Sunshine and Heaven”. That one’s about an early morning run in the springtime - light, fun, and playful, a completely different tone from The Loving Years.

I recently played both songs for my friend. He was gracious in his response. Then he picked up his guitar and began fingerpicking the melody of “The Loving Years” while we talked through keys, chords, and transitions.

I guess he was right about me. Remember that first chorus I liked but couldn’t do anything with? I turned it into a verse. It’s now part of a third song based on the original story I wanted to tell.

And new ideas keep coming. I have fragments of songs scattered around the house, waiting for the right moment to come together.

I hope I’ll improve my craft with practice. But even if I never write another song, these past weeks have already been a gift from God. A reminder that we’re still capable of change. Still capable of growth. Even in the late autumn and early winter of life.

Sometimes it takes a friend to see what we can’t. To call something out of us that we would have left buried. And sometimes, against our better judgment, it’s worth listening.

So here’s my suggestion: If someone you trust tells you there’s something more in you…

Don’t dismiss it too quickly.

They might be hearing a song you haven’t learned to recognize yet.

What about you? Is there something you’ve quietly assumed you’re “not the kind of person” to do? Maybe a friend has said otherwise. Consider taking one small step toward that unlikely thing - write a paragraph, strum a chord, sketch a line, make the call. You don’t have to finish anything.

Just begin.

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I love to run. I never thought I’d say that, much less believe it. Some days are easy. Most days are hard - really hard in my seventies. Sometimes I can’t wait to get out the door; other days, I bargain with myself like a man negotiating a plea deal. I want a little time off for good behavior.

Some runs are light and fun. Others are gloriously awful.

These days, most of them are awful.

But runners aren’t born. They’re made one run at a time. So, out I go.

Once I get moving, my mood shifts. My aging joints loosen a bit. My breathing settles. My pace improves to an old-man jog. Rhythm in motion produces music in my soul.

I start with one unspoken imperative: don’t stop. Keep going until my plan for the day is finished. On really good days, magic happens, and I keep going, never wanting it to end.

Seven years ago, I was camping at Montgomery Bell State Park in Tennessee during the early spring. I decided on an early-morning long run on the park roads. The temperature was hovering in the 50s, and the air was heavy with fog. I stretched, stepped outside, and began to move.

My first mile was slow, as it always is. My body, even seven years ago, was already firmly in the “vintage” category and required extra babying to keep the wheels from falling off. I had no set route, just a general plan to enjoy the run and let the roads decide the rest.

I soon wandered down a spur toward the golf course and quickly discovered it led nowhere interesting. It was a short putt, not a long drive.

The fog thickened as I ran. Yesterday’s rain and the cool morning air worked together like a fog machine. My shirt was wet, though I couldn’t tell whether that was from sweat or fog. To my right, dew highlighted dozens of spider webs in the woods. Backlit by the weak morning sun, they glowed silver, their hiding places revealed.

I was grateful to be out on the road. If I’d been on a trail, I’d be walking face-first into those silky, sticky, icky webs. The thought made me shiver. Another reason to just keep running.

I took another spur, this one leading down to a picnic area. Longer this time. Downhill. I was in full swing, enjoying the run. Nothing was going to stop me now. An empty parking lot emerged from the haze. Dogwoods materialized out of the mist along its edge as I ran, their white blossoms subtle and reserved, obscured by the fog. The blooms were translucent, ghostly, quietly beautiful against the mist.

Note to self: Maybe I should come back for a picture later in the day, but right then, I had a run to finish.

Then I saw a redbud in full bloom.

Redbuds are not shy. They don’t ease into spring. They announce it. Pink explodes, loud and unapologetic. In the fog, it was almost shocking.

And still, I kept running.

I didn’t want to break my rhythm. I couldn’t stop until my workout was complete. My heart and body had to keep moving. I needed forward motion. Sweat was leaching impurities from body and soul, and stopping felt like a failure. It would disrupt my pace, my distance, and my neat internal accounting. So I ran past the beauty, congratulating myself on my discipline.

The fog deepened as I got closer to the lake. More and more blooming trees materialized out of the mist, their beauty quietly haunting me. The internal debate started up, familiar from past runs.

Can I stop?

Should I stop?

Does stopping mean quitting?

A pause was not the end of the world. I could start again. I had no appointment to keep, no meeting to miss. I was retired. My time was my own. I could adjust my final numbers. I knew all this. I had always known this. And still, I resisted.

Then I did it. I slowed my pace, and then I paused. I stopped running from beauty and let it catch me.

Why was I in such a hurry? My reason for running was to pause, to let God drown me in the splendor of His creation. I just hadn’t realized it until that moment.

The fog wrapped the redbud tree in a soft gray cloud. It softened the image, giving the blossoms a pink aura. The sun glowed faintly overhead, lighting pink candles in the tree.

Eventually, I turned away, but couldn’t resist looking back. The tree had already begun to disappear. Already, it was more cloud than flower.

The fog was in bloom.

Farther down the road, another redbud, hidden in the mist, was already shedding its blooms. Pink petals covered the ground like snow, its brief shout of color fading, so I stopped again. Beauty needs time to sink in.

When I finally began running again that time, I thought about how momentum rules my day. I’ve always been goal-driven. Even in retirement, I lived as if life were a series of finish lines. I raced through moments meant to be noticed. A year into retirement, I was finally beginning to learn to pause.

Life requires hard running at times. But not every day. Not every moment. Not without pause. I’m still learning when to push and when to pause. That morning, I broke the pattern of forty years of living. I stopped twice in a place and time that will never come again. And I was the better for it.

Sometimes, the most important part of our day is letting the fog bloom.

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He was wild and untrained when I met him. He didn’t understand a word I said, but from the beginning, I liked him.

My name is Cookie, and I’m a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

It took my human a long time to get my name right. He tried all sorts of other sounds first, but when he finally said something recognizably close to the right one, I responded.

We’ve been together for more than a year now, and I’ve expended a lot of effort training him. He’s making progress, but humans are notoriously slow. I know because my neighbor Sadie and I compare notes whenever we meet along the fence line.

She assures me my human isn’t unusually dense, like I thought. Just average.

Before I met him, I lived with my family, all my sisters and me. I knew it would change someday. I wasn’t naive. I’d heard the rumors.

And then the day came.

I was a little groggy when I met him. I’d just awakened from my after-lunch, pre-mid-afternoon nap. We all ran out to find a funny-smelling stranger there. Being friendly by nature, I danced and wagged my tail to introduce myself. He picked us up one by one and tried to talk to us.

I was the last one, and since I was still drowsy, I tried to fall asleep in his lap. That might explain what happened next. Before I knew it, I found myself in some kind of traveling case, with this human making strange noises at me in a completely unintelligible barking babble.

Having little choice in the matter, I went along for the ride.

I was kind to him, but even then, he seemed overly agitated when I left small gifts around the house. It was necessary. A girl has to mark her territory, you know. It took several months to train him to recognize my signals for going outside.

His language acquisition skills were paltry. After a full year of instruction, he still only understands maybe a dozen words.

Frankly, I expected better of him.

Still, he’s grown on me.

We’re friends now. We go places together. Take walks together. Share meal times. Even sleep in the same bed.

That last part required patience to bring about. He just didn’t get it at first. But I was persistent.

He insisted I sleep somewhere else, but I knew from conversations with other dogs that this was a common human misunderstanding. So I explained the situation, the only way humans seem to understand.

I whined.

I waited until he was asleep and then began my presentation. The louder he snored, the louder I explained.

At first, he tried putting me in another room. Amateur move. I simply increased the volume. However, none of my efforts seemed to work until we visited other humans. I think he didn’t want me waking them up, so he pulled me into bed with him.

Finally.

Humans can be so pigheaded, can’t they? But with steady training, they usually come around.

When the days got warmer, we were both sick for a while. He took me to a place where the humans seemed friendly, but they got me drunk. When I woke up, I had a hangover, and my stomach hurt. To make matters worse, there was a large plastic cone around my head. It felt like I’d stuck my head into an RCA Victrola and couldn’t get it out.

It was humiliating.

After several days of persistent persuasion, my human, so slow on the pickup, finally relented and removed my cone of shame.

Just in time, too, because he needed me. He was sick as well. A girl just knows these things. He’d been leaving me at home every morning for weeks, and seemed to be getting weaker and weaker. He didn’t have his old vim and vigor.

But as the days got hotter, we both gradually improved. Me first. Then him eventually. The days were beginning to get short again before I began to feel comfortable with his health.

One day before the leaves changed colors, he took me to a pet “resort’ and left me there for days. It didn’t seem much like a resort to me. No swimming pools. No buffets. No dancing at night.

The humans were likable, but I’ve never met one I didn’t want to jump on and lick. We’d play in the sun, but then they’d take me back to my room and ignore me. To make matters worse, I had to share them with the other dogs, and to my horror, even a few cats.

Cats. Can you believe it? And they called it a resort.

The next time I saw travel bags appear, I knew exactly what was happening. When we returned home after that one, I made sure to communicate my feelings by leaving a few blood-pressure-raising gifts on the floor.

My strategy proved effective.

He started taking me along with him sometimes. We travel in his big crate on wheels. I curl up and watch him or pretend to sleep while he does God knows what all day long.

We’ve even visited a faraway place where other humans I recognize live. He talks about the little humans who live there using a word that starts with a familiar growling sound: “grrrr.”

There are three of these “Grrr’s,” each a different size. I assume they’re his puppies and will be fully grown next year. They approach me with equal parts curiosity and caution, but by the end of the visit, I’m close to having them trained enough to walk with me. They seem to learn so much faster than the human I live with.

Back home during the recent cold months, he tries to play with me. I have some new toys like the puppies do. We play, and I let him chase me. He throws a ball and expects me to bring it back to him. That’s ridiculous.

It’s my ball.

If he wants a ball, let him get his own. He’s free to chase after me to try and take mine, if he wants, but I see no reason to make it easy for him. But then I remember he’s not a dog, and doesn’t really understand these things. So, occasionally, out of kindness, I let him have it. Training humans requires encouragement from time to time.

During the cold weather, it snowed, and I liked playing in it. But one day we had rain that froze into ice. That was different. All day long, he kept opening the door and pushing me out to do my thing, but I kept running back in. It was a little game we played until mid-afternoon when the rain finally stopped.

I won. I finally went on my terms, but when I got outside, nothing smelled right, and my paws kept slipping. I found it’s really hard to squat gracefully on ice.

Nowadays, when he gets ready to go somewhere, I run to my big comfy crate. Inside, there’s always a toy to play with and something soft to sleep on. He closes me in, and I feel strangely content. I sleep most of the time he’s gone. When he returns, I’m ready to play, but he insists on taking me outside first.

He’s such a good boy like that. I don’t even have to remind him anymore.

Sometimes it almost seems like he’s trying to talk to me. Such a pity. I can’t underst….

SQUIRREL! SQUIRREL! BARK! BARK! SQUIRREL!

SQUIRREL!

…Sorry about that. It’s my job to protect humans from squirrel attacks. I’m always on paw patrol.

As I was saying, I can’t understand a thing he says. But when I look into his eyes, we can communicate. His soft, cool slate-blue eyes are expressive. Sometimes they fill with tears at odd moments, and he seems sad, which makes me sad too. But much more often, they’re smiling at me.

And when they smile, I feel something warm inside my furry chest.

Still, he’s such an odd creature. He feeds birds but doesn’t want me to chase them. He knows a rabbit lives in the backyard, yet seems uninterested in hunting it. He showers under a waterfall but doesn’t want me to join him.

And he becomes strangely emotional if I chew on anything he doesn’t give me.

He’s so uptight.

Sadie says warmer weather will return soon. I can already smell the change in the air. My human seems completely unaware of it because his nose doesn’t work properly. He doesn’t even notice how good his food smells, or the sweet fragrance of the flowers he brings home, or how not-so-sweet some of his bathroom visits are.

At least I take mine outside. I’ve tried to explain that he should do the same, but he remains stubbornly confused.

Typical man.

I’m fully grown now, though I’m not very big. I’m not like Sadie or even Miles behind the big wooden fence, so I keep asking for more food. I want to be big like them, but once again, my human isn’t getting the idea.

Nevertheless, despite all his shortcomings and the work he requires, I like him. I like him a lot.

In fact, I might even love him.

Of course, he doesn’t understand that concept. Sometimes I’m not sure I do either. But sometimes love shows up unexpectedly when you spend enough time together, as we do. You think you’re taking care of them, but then you notice they’ve really been quietly taking care of you all along.

And inexplicably, I think he loves me too. Whenever I look into his eyes, I can see it because they’re smiling back at me.

Did you ever have a pet like Cookie who could have written this story? One that seemed to understand you better than most people? One who pads quietly into the room, curls up beside you, and stays?

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Until next time, be grateful for the companions, big and small, you’ve had along the road.

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I sat on the edge of the bed holding one shoe, unsure how long I’d been there.

I felt like an absent-minded professor, lost in his equations, looking up from the chalkboard and realizing the whole room was staring at him.

I glanced down. One shoe was in my hand. One still on my foot. I ought to take it off. Or put the other one on.

I looked around and remembered. I was at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, more than halfway through a four-night retreat. Alone. In silence. On purpose. With no way of escaping that didn’t involve a car and a long drive home.

All that raises a reasonable question: why would anyone voluntarily do that to themselves?

I live alone, so I already have plenty of solitude and silence. But distractions are easy in familiar places, and what I wanted was an undistracted spiritual retreat, a few days without excuses. I wanted to know God better.

Silence and solitude are classic Christian disciplines we don’t often exercise in our lives. At the Abbey, I was getting a big dose of it.

There’s no instruction manual included. No one tells you what to do. The Abbey simply posted signs reminding guests to remain silent, even in our own rooms. That was it. I could have spent my days reading novels, listening to music with earbuds, or watching videos with headphones. I could do whatever I wanted, as long as I didn’t make any noise doing it.

But I didn’t approach it that way.

I left my iPad and laptop at home. I packed my Bible, paper, pens, and a handful of questions and prompts. I turned off my phone when I arrived. I came to sit with God without my usual excuses.

And to say I was apprehensive would be an understatement. I knew I could always leave at any time. And yet, soon, silence stopped feeling like a punishment. It began to feel quietly intimate.

So much so that by Thursday morning, I was so at home in the silence that I found myself frozen mid-movement, holding one shoe like I’d never let go, slowly remembering where I was.

The Abbey itself wasn’t glamorous. Like me, the bed was soft and lumpy, and I didn’t sleep especially well. The food wasn’t very good either. The highlight was a giant meatball, charred around the edges and dipped in barbecue sauce. Call it spaghetti-western cuisine, but don’t call it gourmet.

Meals were eaten in total silence too, spaced far apart, with no talking or joking to ease the awkwardness. I couldn’t say hello. I couldn’t learn names. I couldn’t fill in the gaps. It turns out it’s hard to stay silent when everything inside you wants to talk.

That made me wonder if I’m responsible for more noise in my life than I’d like to admit.

Maybe silence isn’t empty. Maybe I don’t always need to comment, explain, or give an opinion. And maybe if I stop rehearsing my next sentence, I might actually hear what someone else is saying.

In the silence, I was learning to tame my tongue. Who knew that quiet, shy, introverted me needed to learn that lesson?

But sleep and food were incidental to why I was there. What I really hoped for was to know God better. He was why I came.

King David would have understood. Three thousand years ago, he wrote:

“For God alone my soul waits in silence.” Psalm 62:1

For God alone. Not for answers. Not for clarity. Not for improvement. For God alone.

Jesus did this too. He spent forty days alone in the wilderness before his public ministry and regularly withdrew to quiet places to pray.

With one shoe on and one shoe off, I glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes had passed since I’d sat down. That kind of time loss happened a lot in the silence at the Abbey. I’d sink so deeply into thought I’d forget what I was doing.

I was profoundly and purposefully lost in silence.

With each passing hour, the noise in my mind had diminished. The debris cluttering my thoughts began to wash away. I was less scattered and more centered on God. I began to listen for what he might be saying instead of telling him what I wanted to hear. In the extended silence, I could make out what God had been trying to say to me all along.

I prayed. I read Scripture. I wrote answers to questions the Holy Spirit seemed to ask me. Some answers delighted me. Others concerned me. In seeking God’s face, I was learning more about myself, and I didn’t always like what I discovered.

I’m still a man in need of a Savior.

I walked the property in silence, prayed in my room, and wrote until words ran out. I thought. I meditated on the Bible. I contemplated the love of an almighty and just God, amazed that He would ever love me.

The boundaries blurred. When I was writing, was it prayer? When a new idea surfaced, was I thinking, or meditating, or praying? I couldn’t always tell where one activity ended and another began.

Were my deepest thoughts simply secret prayers? Or were my prayers just thoughts wrapped in religious language?

My prayers didn’t sound like prayers anymore. They became an ongoing, two-way conversation with the Creator of the universe – more a communion, a sharing of hearts. Very little of it conformed to the rules of prayer I carried in my head.

In a way, I was living out the apostle Paul’s call to pray without ceasing. My whole life felt like a prayer, sliding back and forth between earthly and spiritual realities.

That morning, with one shoe off, I was on holy ground, in front of a burning bush, talking with the great I Am. It was holy not because of where I was, but because of who He was.

After a few more minutes on that holy ground, I finally took off my other shoe and moved to the bed, my original intent. Remembering lunch, I nervously watched the clock, knowing how easily I could lose track of time again. Somehow, I made it downstairs for another silent meal.

I’m glad I did. That was meatball day.

All in all, it was quite an experience, but sitting half shod wasn’t the only one like that on my retreat. There were more, too private to share.

But I’m careful with my memories. Self-deception can be powerful. Experiences alone have no value. The only thing that matters is whether I love God and my neighbor more afterward.

Experience fades, but true change settles in. It becomes part of who we are, something we carry forward with us, preparing us for the next change coming.

At home a month later, wearing both shoes as I write this, I find myself still craving times of silence. Meals without YouTube. Mornings protected by Do Not Disturb. Drives and runs without music. Moments where I stop filling the silence and simply listen.

Because sometimes change comes in a whisper.

You can do it too. You don’t need a monastery. Just turn something off. Sit still. Start with a few minutes. And see what happens when the noise in your life finally gives way.

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I stood at a crossroads, arguing with myself.

I usually lose those kinds of arguments.

Or maybe it’s win.

One sign pointed back to where I started. The other toward Cross Knob. Left or right. Up or down.

I’d already walked four miles and was tired enough to be done for the day. I had at least one more to go, and Cross Knob would only add more distance, but it was my choice.

I’d started after lunch to let the day warm up. The map said: road for a couple of miles, then a trail, then another road back. From what I could see ahead, the road was paved. No need for hiking boots or walking sticks. My biggest challenge would be the cold, made colder by a stiff January wind that week before the big ice storm would hit Nashville. Warm layers and steady movement would take care of that.

I set off with the confidence of a man who hadn’t begun yet. But heading up that first long hill into the wind, I got so cold that I began rethinking the hike and several life choices. Once again, I had confused enthusiasm for preparation.

Head down, I kept going. I’d warm up eventually. I crested the first hill, and to my dismay, the road ahead was dirt. I could turn back, get my boots and trekking pole, and start again.

Sensible people would do that, but I’m not always so sensible.

I kept walking.

The road ahead dropped into a valley. Open fields and rolling hills beckoned. I passed a lake, entered the woods, and finally escaped the wind. But with the trees came enough leaves to cover the road. They were slipping and sliding enough to keep me alert.

Wishing I’d worn my boots, I pushed on in my running shoes. In the low places, the dirt turned to mud. Four-wheelers had churned it up, their tracks frozen in time, daring me to cross gracefully. I didn’t always succeed.

The road ended, and the track narrowed into a trail. The hills grew steeper. The leaves thicker. The mud muddier. For two more slow miles, I kept rehearsing my regrets about not wearing boots.

Then the trail crossed a small waterfall and ended at a pair of signs.

Left or right? Up to Cross Knob, or back down to where I started?

You know me. Of course, I wanted some pictures from the top. But the hike had already been harder than I’d expected. I was tired. Cold. And tired of being cold. I just wanted to get back down to where I could warm up. So, I decided not to go.

Still, I didn’t move. I stood there, debating with myself, looking back and forth between the signs.

I started thinking about regret.

Regret comes in two forms. One kind is regret over what we did or said. We’re sorry, but we can’t undo it. This kind often mixes with disappointment, shame, and remorse.

The other kind comes from doing nothing at all. We regret what we didn’t do. In that moment of decision, we lacked the requisite courage, vision, energy, or time. It’s Robert Frost’s idea of the road not taken, and wondering what difference it might have made.

Regrets for what I did were the norm when I was younger. But somewhere along the way, that shifted. These days, I far more often regret what I don’t do than what I do. My regrets come from hesitation. From letting excuses talk me out of even trying.

Standing there, I checked the map. A third of a mile. Two hundred feet of climbing.

I could do that.

I was running out of excuses.

More importantly, I knew I’d regret not going if I didn’t.

No more regrets.

The trail wasn’t steep at first, but I knew better. A big hill was waiting. I found it a quarter of a mile later. I stood at the edge of the Knob, looking up, rethinking this idea. I wasn’t sure I could answer all the questions that hill was asking.

The trail was just a worn place on a steep hillside. What was I doing there anyway? I was in my seventies. I had running shoes on, not boots. I wasn’t up to this.

But no regrets. Right?

So, I started picking my way forward, driving my way up, keeping my balance by leaning so far into the hill I could almost lick the ground.

I stopped at a small flat spot near a tree to rest. I checked my Garmin. My heart rate had jumped to 5K racing levels. My lungs had filed a formal complaint with my brain. I wasn’t out of shape. I was out of oxygen.

My body voted to turn around.

I overruled it, because looking up, I could see the cross high above me. I could rest there.

There’s probably a good metaphor in that.

I gulped air and started again, pushing and dragging my way to the top, victorious in a battle with my body I don’t always win anymore.

There was the cross. And a bench.

I stumbled to the bench. I sat down and recovered my dignity and my breath. I had needed that bench. I loved that bench.

From there, I could see the Abbey of Gethsemani, where I’d begun the hike. I turned to look at the cross. It was simple and plain, once part of the old church at the Abbey. Someone had decided it belonged up here and somehow made that happen.

After pictures and recovery, I started back down, slipping once with a gentle bump and no harm done. Near the bottom, I nearly tripped over a fallen branch and my own feet - twice. Overconfidence likes to follow accomplishment. I was glad no one was watching.

The rest of the hike back was easier. The trail became a dirt road, and the time passed quickly.

I was satisfied. I’d done a hard thing. I’d climbed the knob. I’d conquered myself.

I had no regrets.

Except for that boot thing.

Some days, we face more than we planned to give. Maybe we’re colder, slower, and missing the right gear. But even then, sometimes the best thing to do is take the next step and see what’s at the top.

What’s one climb you’ve been avoiding - not because you can’t do it, but because it’d be easier not to? I’d love to hear about the Cross Knobs you’ve faced and what finally tipped the decision.

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Kelly smiled at me - one of those come-hither smiles I couldn’t resist. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to. I knew exactly what she meant.

She held out her arms. I reached for her, lifted her up, whirled her around, and set her back on her feet in the middle of the room.

With this, another Sunday morning began.

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I’ve volunteered at church with young children for nearly a decade - first in Tampa, then in Nashville. Walkers. Nurseries. Toddlers. These days it’s with 12- to 24-month-olds in Nashville. I love these children, so caring for them is a joy, not a burden.

Our room isn’t large, but it’s fun. We have lots of toys and books, a small slide, rocking horses, and a little house filled with balls. A cool tunnel is attached to it for crawling through. I don’t fit in the house or the tunnel. I’ve checked.

As I watch them, I see myself in them.

They’re just little humans trying to stand upright and navigate life. Just like me.

• We all fall down. They bounce back up. I see a doctor.

• We all need a shoulder to cry on. They recover quickly. I replay it for years.

• We all make messes. They’re cute. I’m a “concern”.

• We all need help. They expect it. I apologize.

• We all want to be held. They ask honestly. I make a joke.

• We all really, really like bubbles. No difference there. Admit it. None at all.

We don’t outgrow these things.

Thinking about these Sundays, I realize they’ve made my heart young again. Somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten what it was like to be a child. I’d lost the ability to laugh and play. I was wrapped up in the hard realities of being an adult. I was ignoring the seven-year-old boy hiding inside me.

These children (and riding a bicycle) helped me find him again. They opened the door and let him come out to play.

As the children settle in, I no longer look strange sitting on the floor. I belong there. I push cars, make engine noises, knock over Duplo towers, and read books about monkeys. I laugh at their antics, like Kelly climbing the slide backward, one shoe missing, holding a toy she refuses to release, inevitably slipping back down to the bottom.

Jesus told us in Mark 10:13, talking about children, “To such belong the kingdom of God.”

Maybe that means heaven will be full of children, laughing and playing like this. If so, I get a small foretaste of what’s to come each week.

Aging has a way of shrinking our vision of the future. Our dreams fade, our health fails, and time feels shorter and shorter. But these children quietly remind me that the story keeps going even after I’m gone and that the best way to influence the future is to give myself away today.

Many of them will live into the next century. That 22nd-century perspective helps quiet my natural tendency toward navel-gazing, woe-is-me, and that no-time-left mindset that comes so easily at my age.

On the floor, life looks different. I see the room from Kelly’s view. I understand why, in a diaper, standing on a chair before sitting makes sense. Why climbing the slide is irresistible. Why it’s easy to trip over mats meant to protect me.

(Life is full of little ironies like that, isn’t it?)

I take the lesson on perspective home. I try to see life from others’ viewpoints: friends, neighbors, even strangers. This practice makes me a better follower of Jesus and, I hope, a better man.

Then comes the hardest part of volunteering: getting back up off the floor.

With witnesses.

Back on my feet, it’s time for music videos and dancing with the stars of my life. Kelly is full of her soon-to-be-two-year-old dance moves, her natural rhythm on full display.

I move with the music in what you might generously call an “interpretive” dance. You certainly wouldn’t call it dancing. It’s more like a seventy-year-old shuffle, but I don’t care.

I’m comfortable helping with this age group. Maybe too comfortable.

Lately, I’ve been wondering. Is this season of life coming to an end? Should it?

To test that out, I’ve decided to shake things up a bit. I want to see what my snow globe of volunteerism looks like after the snow settles, so I’ve asked to change classrooms and move to an older group. In this new setting, I’ll teach a Bible lesson and do art projects. That might mean working with five-year-olds or teaching fourth graders.

Either prospect terrifies me.

Every fear and insecurity I have is screaming, Don’t do this. You’re too old. You should stay where you’re comfortable.

But I’m doing it anyway.

Because I’m not done yet.

You either grow and change, or you die. The best way to keep growing? Challenge myself with hard things, even scary ones. If I don’t, I’ll soon wilt on the vine. It happens a lot faster at seventy-one than it did when I was twenty-one.

My little friend Kelly starts to cry. She lifts her arms, asking to be held. I sit in the rocking chair with her and reassure her that her mother will be back soon. Gradually, she calms down, trusting my arms to hold her steady.

Eventually, she slides down from my lap because it’s time for bubbles, and remember - everyone really, really likes bubbles. Our little tete-a-tete has ended, the crisis passed, another small moment she’ll never recall, and I won’t soon forget.

And tomorrow, like her, I’ll keep learning how to grow.

Maybe growth doesn’t always look very dramatic at my age. Sometimes it’s just sitting on the floor, getting back up, and trusting that your next small step still matters.

Is there an area of your life where you’ve grown too comfortable? What small step might bring new growth?

A note on “Kelly.” She is an amalgam of three children I’ve recently cared for. The moments are real; the name is not.

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Once upon a time, there was a Prince who traveled to a distant land called Arizona.

He’d left home to chase adventure because his kingdom was no more. He found a dry, windswept land of wide valleys, sharp mountains, and stark beauty. There, he decided to stop and rest for three weeks. It was as good a place as any.

The winter days were warm and bright. The nights were cool and sometimes cold. Rain interrupted the pattern every now and then because even in fairy tales, a little rain must fall.

But only a little.

Day after day, nothing changed. Then, three days before the Prince planned to leave, the impossible happened.

It snowed.

Snow in the desert is a rare and fleeting beauty, clothing the wilderness with a glittering white gown, ready for a prince. A kiss of sunshine brings its sparkle to life, but the spell won’t last. From the moment it falls, the clock is already ticking toward midnight, that moment when the snow will disappear beneath the warm sun.

He quickly dressed - boots, jacket, and hat – grabbed his camera and gloves, and stepped outside, into a winter dreamland, a frozen fantasy in the Arizona desert. Trees sparkled and complained softly about the extra weight. Fat flurries floated by like twinkling pixies.

Snow in the desert was impossible, implausible, and incredible.

It couldn’t be real. And yet, there it was. The whole first winter away from his kingdom had felt like make-believe. Maybe he was, too. Perhaps he was trapped inside a fairy tale, and the only way out was the old-fashioned way, by slaying a dragon and finding a Princess.

Real or not, he wanted to see more. That meant leaving the safety of the manicured campground and venturing into a desert that clearly wasn’t following the rules.

He walked carefully to the back gate. Luckily, the troll on duty slept. The snow softened the sound of his steps as he crept quietly past - one, two, three - quiet steps, closing the gate behind him as he disappeared into a landscape he barely recognized.

This is probably a good moment to admit what you already suspect. I was that Prince, and most of this story is true. I’ll let you guess which bits aren’t, though I warn you, you’re probably wrong.

I followed a path toward the mountains, and soon found myself near an arroyo, surrounded by an enchanted grove of mesquite trees, their branches bent with the weight of wet snow. That’s when I saw the dragon.

He was hiding, though not very well. I could see his tail sticking out from behind a tree. The little boy inside me had a single, undeniable thought.

Snowballs.

I ran behind a tree, using it as my fortress, and armed myself quickly.

When I peeked out again, the dragon had moved and was now threatening to melt the snow and set the forest ablaze with his scorching breath. I couldn’t allow that, so I attacked. Snowball after snowball hit its target. The dragon faded away with a dramatic wail, receding into legend where all properly defeated dragons belong.

I’d done it. I’d slain the dragon.

I stood in icy splendor, relishing my triumph, soaking in the thrill of victory. Still, time was limited to celebrate. Midnight was coming, and I still had to find the Princess.

So, I kept walking.

Then I heard something and stopped to listen. The desert was whispering, and I strained to catch its voice. I heard the wind gently rustling through the branches, producing a quiet tune. Then, faintly, I heard voices. Three birds danced among the branches.

“Good morning, friends,” I called. “What do you think of the snow?”

They sang back, “It was a cold surprise!”

Birds in fairy tales can talk, you know.

They continued, “But snow won’t keep us from singing and playing. Isn’t it a grand day?”

I agreed. We talked and played until they tired of the game and flew off toward the next arroyo.

That’s when I heard what I had missed before.

I heard the snow melting, and I assure you this part was real.

It shifted and slid and dropped to the ground with soft, muffled thumps. Here. Over there. Behind me. The spell was breaking. My fairy tale was dissolving. Midnight was coming.

And I still hadn’t found the Princess.

Blue sky slipped through the clouds, adding a new color to the morning. The mountains shifted and reflected an added glow. The wind picked up, blowing more clouds away and sending a shiver through my body.

I looked at my watch. Could it really have been three hours already?

Maybe I’d find the Princess another day. In another fairy tale. I turned back.

And that’s when I saw her.

She stood quietly in the sunlight - a mesquite covered with snow, black branches holding white brilliance. She shimmered, melted, and settled somewhere deep inside me.

I was undone.

This was art worthy of the Louvre, but there were no guards, no crowds, no ropes. Just me, standing alone in the Arizona desert. No one else would ever see this. The snow would soon be gone, and the moment would vanish forever.

It seemed like a gift. As if the Creator had painted this scene just for me, pausing everything else in the universe to give me a private showing, a special exhibition of His talents.

Words fail me, so I’ll stop.

I took pictures, but they’re worthless. A photograph can’t capture perfection. It can only hint at the truth. It flattens reality, ignoring the contours of sound, smell, and feeling - all things that can’t be captured in a photograph. They can only be lived and experienced.

That place, that moment, that Beauty.

Here was my Princess. I knew I’d found her.

As I parted, I threw Beauty a kiss. I knew we would meet again in various guises during my travels on the Senior Road.

I walked back to the gate, the sun warming my face. But before stepping through, I turned for one last look, letting it all melt into my memory as the clock struck midnight on my wintry fairy tale.

Have you ever been given a moment that seemed unnecessary, fleeting, and somehow meant just for you? Moments like that don’t last, and maybe that’s the point. We don’t collect them. We just live them.

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It began raining soon after I broke camp.

Not a dramatic storm - just a cold, dreary rain that lingered all day, as if it were trying to wash away my excitement and expose my fear. Excitement because this was the day I’d imagined for months. Fear because I had no idea how it would turn out. But I knew that if my dream of camping across America was ever going to happen, I had to leave Tennessee.

It was time to stop talking and start doing.

This was reinvention and renewal writ large, the final outward step in an inward process that began sixteen months earlier, when my wife passed away. In the interim, I’d retired, bought an RV, moved away from Tampa, and emptied and remodeled our Nashville house so I could rent it out. I planned, prepared, prayed, and practiced camping nearby. Each item checked off my list felt like another step closer to my dream.

My first destination was to be Quartzsite, Arizona. Even the name sounded promising - like crystal hills and quartz just lying about in the desert.

Quartzsite, it turns out, is a town surrounded by Bureau of Land Management land, a rocky desert where camping is almost free, if you register. Every January, it hosts a massive RV gathering. I planned to boondock there (no water, no electricity) for ten days with an RV group of fellow Christians I found online. I wanted community, and I needed friends.

I took the southern route for better weather, stopping at rest areas and breaking up the drive with campground stays for a few days in Texas and New Mexico.

Crossing the Mississippi River on that first rainy day felt symbolic. It marked the boundary in my head between east and west, between my old life and my new, between who I’d been and who I hoped to become. I was crossing my own Rubicon, hoping for a better ending than Julius Caesar’s.

I pressed on through Arkansas, with few stops, eating lunch at my kitchen table as the miles piled up. As daylight faded, I found myself 500 miles west at the Texas Welcome Center in Texarkana. When I pulled in, I exhaled and finally felt the tension slowly release.

With no hookups, I ran on batteries. Nothing says “bold new beginning’ like no heat, no television, and no microwave. Still, I had food to eat and warm blankets.

Unlike Caesar crossing the Rubicon wearing a toga with who knows what underneath, I was bundled up in layers. I sat at my kitchen table, trying to stay warm, blinds drawn, rain on my roof, processing the day. This was it. My first night west of the Mississippi. I was freezing and alone, but I was in Texas.

After dinner, I climbed into bed wearing everything I owned. I’d forgotten about the sleeping bags I’d stowed away, so I made a cocoon out of blankets and read for a while. Outside, I could hear interstate traffic and fellow travelers coming and going. Shivering alone in a parking lot wasn’t exactly the opening scene I’d imagined for my new adventure.

As the days passed, every stop along the way to Quartzsite fell short of the movie playing in my head. It turned out real life has a much smaller budget for atmosphere and special effects than my imagination. Still, I reminded myself that the magical, mystical hills of Quartzsite were coming - and surely that meant friends.

But Quartzsite disappointed me, too.

It was just a brown and rocky desert, not magical after all. No quartz within sight. Worse, the group I’d come to meet had already formed a tight circle of campers, like a modern wagon train. I set up within sight but far enough away to feel like an outsider, a lone coyote watching from the dark.

They already knew each other. They’d done this before. All were married couples, plus one 84-year-old widow who was a Quartzsite veteran. Being single, I felt like the proverbial third wheel, an all too familiar role.

We shared meals. We walked, explored, and played games. We studied Scripture, sang songs, listened to live music, and sat around campfires at night.

It was all very pleasant, but I felt like I didn’t really belong there.

And then it rained. All day. In a place that barely sees five inches a year. Activities were canceled. The ground turned soggy, and the cacti sagged, drooping and dreary. So did I.

I’m dangerous, alone with my thoughts. Often a good kind of dangerous, but not on that day. I brooded over weather, people, and the mechanics of addition with Roman numerals. How do you carry the X if it totals more than ten?

It’s amazing how small a camper can feel when you want to be outside in the warm sunshine with friends. Friends, of course, had always been a complicated subject for me. Making them was like online dating: everyone swiped left and moved on, leaving me talking to myself in the mirror.

The people were kind enough, but I wasn’t ready to belong and didn’t know how to get ready. I hovered near the edges, hoping for and fearing inclusion. Leftover sorrow and an accountant’s personality made me a poor fit for the group.

The fault was entirely mine. Not theirs. And not in my stars. Guess I was more Brutus than Caesar.

The life I’d scripted wasn’t working. Reality had entered stage right. Starting over is hard enough without your plans unraveling. But God has a way of flipping tables and upsetting even our best-laid plans. He writes better stories than we do.

That rainy day, I stopped worrying about whether I’d crossed the Rubicon and just buried Caesar. I was a slate wiped clean by loss and its aftermath. No commitments. No obligations. No responsibilities.

I was willing to follow the wind wherever it blew. Surely, I should be willing to follow God wherever He led me.

I opened my door a couple of days later and noticed a single yellow flower off to my right. It stood in stark contrast to the dry and rocky brown desert, a poignant reminder that God brings sunshine and flowers after the rain. Maybe He wasn’t through with me after all.

I could bloom in the desert.

I could bloom after the rain.

I could even still bloom all alone.

Those early weeks out west didn’t match the script in my head, but they weren’t wasted. For the millionth time since I lost her, I began again. Each restart changed me a little bit. And those million little bits added up. Day by day, story by story, I grew, and I blossomed.

I ended up traveling the country for four years. Quartzsite didn’t end my story; it was the rewrite I needed.

And from that, I’ve learned that reinvention rarely arrives all at once. It shows up in rainstorms, rest stops, and quiet mornings, just opening the door and noticing what’s around us.

Sometimes trauma speeds up the process. Sometimes routine slows it down. But every day asks something new of us. And when the rainy days come, I lean in closer to God and bloom in the warmth of his sunshine.

If you’ve had a season where starting over didn’t look the way you hoped, but shaped you anyway, I’d love to hear about it. Where did you learn to bloom after the rain?

If you’re interested in what happened between Texarkana and Quartzsite, I wrote about the little mistake I made at the campground in Texas in Wrong Campsite, Right Lesson

And about what happened in New Mexico on my way to Arizona in Dog Canyon Echoes

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