My brother and I used to go shooting once in a while.
Not often. He lived in Illinois and I lived in Indiana, so even then it took some planning. But once in a while we made it happen. Go shooting, hang out, sit around. We did not have to talk much. That was kind of the point.
We do not do that anymore. He is still in Illinois. I live in South Carolina now.
The door opened south
I had wanted to move south for years. My wife wanted out of the Midwest just as bad. When the door finally opened, it opened all the way. A place to live. A job for her right down the street. Things lined up in a way I could not have arranged on my own.
We picked that exact spot on the map for a reason. A few months later that reason was living in California.
So there I was. Right where God put me, for a reason that no longer existed.
What it cost
I do not have much family. My brother is the one I am close to, and we talk on the phone all the time. The relationship did not break.
What broke was the once in a while.
Nobody drives that far just to hang out for an afternoon. And there is no phone version of standing next to your brother at a range, not saying a whole lot. That is what I traded when I said yes to the door God opened. Not my brother. Just being close enough to go see him.
“The LORD had said to Abram, ‘Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you.’”
Genesis 12:1
Dinner in Indiana
A couple months ago we finally made it happen. It had been several years since I had seen him.
We were already headed to northwest Indiana to see my wife’s family. Seeing my brother was not the reason for the trip. It was something we had to carve out of it and work around everybody else’s plans. We have tried before. In all the time we have been down here, this was the first time it ever lined up.
Our drive up there is every bit of twelve to fourteen hours. We had already been up there a couple of days by the time we worked them into the schedule, and then there was the back and forth about where to meet and when. It was a whole thing.
He and my sister in law came over from Illinois. It should have been about a three hour drive. Between Chicago traffic and wrecks and whatever else, it took them more than six.
We met at a restaurant. Not his house. Not ours. A place in the state we both left, because that was where the two of us could reach each other.
They sat us at a table like they do any other night. We ate. We talked. For everything it took to get four people into that building, it was just dinner.
You could tell at the end. There were a lot of extra hugs in the parking lot. Nobody said out loud that it had been several years. We just hung on longer than people usually do.
Then we got in the car and drove out of northwest Indiana, back to our life in South Carolina.
Crossing the line
I lived in Illinois almost forty years. We have been in South Carolina five years now.
Coming home from a trip and crossing back into Illinois always came with a sense of dread. Crossing back into South Carolina comes with relief.
Forty years there. Five years here. This is the one that feels like home.
Still here
So that is where I am. Still driving. The reason we picked that spot is three thousand miles away, the only close family I have is four states in the other direction, and I am still right here where God put me.
“We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps.”
Proverbs 16:9
I would like to tell you I understand it. I do not. I just know my plan was a straight line and His was not.
A brother in Christ and I were going back and forth in a group text a while back, and one of us said it.
It is not our way, it is Yahweh.
Yahweh on the highway.