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Road Kills in my Rearview Mirror Today I saw my life as a series of losses that have resulted in a pool of interior suffering. Just when I thought I would drown in the pool of pain, I found that it has been transformed into a gift. In every area of my life, I have seen wounds grow scabs over where I once was annoyed by pain; and scabs where I used to boast of old troubles and dangers, and have all vanished into my family history. These have all become very vague memories and events I would never willingly recall, unless an old acquaintance returned with a photo or was able to describe details of some kind, proving I was there. Sunday morning, Highway 213, New Year’s Eve: It’s a rare day for the desert, with heavy fog enfolding everything in cold. As I drive away with my wife, our four kids, and pet dog, I marvel at the microscopic amount of time spent here. The moments on this highway seem to be the expanse of my life. The illusory fog has caused more rabbits than usual to lie dead on the highway—they could hear, but they couldn’t see. Each one is a sloppy mess in a series of losses in my life. I see each face, circumstance, and place in my rear view mirror vanishing in the fog as quick and easy as passing road kill rabbits at 65 mph. It seems silly to have taken up so much of my life's effort to pass these piles of carnage on the highway; but it feels good to be encased in the safety of a family car, embodying a man of God and his house, having values, love, and honor. It seems silly to have ever abandoned this holy vessel for furred corpses, and a foggy viewed fast lane. Now here, I can see clearly that I never left this man, but took him with me along the highway of dissipation. I thought I had given him the absolute slip, but now I realize that all the while, I paraded this man of God around in coward’s clothing; hiding in houses of fools. It was ridiculous of me to ever think hiding this man would make him leave me. The man is not mine to send or call; he is my father; and my father's father, and so on: reaching as far back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I can only honor them by following their lead, or disgrace their name by cowering at the sight of dead rabbits on the highway in my rear view mirror. In the voice of my father, I tell myself, "Don't be so silly and forget who you are, boy. You don't have a choice." -Jacob
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