Gradual Change

Road Trip Day 1: Topsail - Cincinnati

It’s funny how quickly life changes, and yet in the midst of change, it can seem like an eternity. Just yesterday we woke up at the beach. Now, this morning I’m sitting on the couch sipping coffee in Ohio, writing about the crazy thing we did yesterday.

Ok, nothing crazy happened.

Our road trip has started and we are officially on our way to Spokane, WA! Well, perhaps our true destination is Durham, NC. We’re just taking a really weird detour to get there.

The first leg of our trip didn’t actually start in Durham, but a couple of hours east on Topsail island. Our scenery changed drastically as the day carried on. We were surprised by how fast it all went by. We left around 6 am and made the comment, “It’s going to be weird when it’s 12 pm and we’ll have driven 6 hours already and will only be halfway there.”

We did notice when it was 12 pm and it was weird.

Day one’s destination was Cincinnati, OH. Technically in one of the many townships, they have, as Aunt Liz has explained. Apparently, Cincinnati is strange.

Along the drive, we saw a lot. Everything from the ocean to the city, to mountains for a long time, then the huge plains of Ohio, and finally Cincinnati. 

the only pic we could get as we entered Ohio

As the scenery changed, so did the conversations. It all went by pretty fast and we were shocked how easy the drive was. God definitely provided for us in that we hit zero traffic on Memorial Day!

We figured we’d get bored, sore, tired, and stuck in traffic. However, none of those things happened.

When we drove into Aunt Liz’s neighborhood we thought we should have had 2 more hours of driving; it just didn’t feel like we’d been driving for 11 hours.

After unloading our bags and resting we all went out for a delicious dinner at El Jinete. It had been too long since I’ve had Mexican food; it was so nice! I could definitely tell Taylor was with her blood when almost everyone got a cheese quesadilla, haha!

After dinner, we drove around the outskirts of the different townships of Cincinnati and gawked at the ridiculous houses in Indian Hills. Some of them looked more like a small private school than a house!

<Insert cool picture we forgot to take, haha!>

This morning as I sit and reflect, I’m thankful for family. I got to meet my new aunt and new cousins, and it was amazing! I am so happy to have finally met them and they were all very nice and welcoming. Biscuit the dog was so excited to greet us when she came in from eating cicadas. Even the little cat, Milo, snuggled with me when we watched the Suite Life of Zack and Cody last night.

Definitely the nicest stay and host we’ll have for the whole trip, haha!

I’ll leave off with one last thought. We saw all this scenery change, the beach, mountains, plains, and cities. However, none of it happened all at once.

It was all gradual.

It made me think of how life changes. Both good and bad, our character changes gradually.

If we are not seeking the Lord, it may slip gradually in a bad direction. If we are seeking God, we grow gradually closer and closer to Him. None of it happens instantly, though.

There are no shortcuts like an airplane. The neat thing about flying is you can leave the green luscious hills of North Carolina and land in the dry rocky mountains in Colorado. It’s an instant environment change. When you drive you don’t get that. Every state blends into the next one and each has little remnants of the last as they slowly morph into a new landscape. 

Isn’t life similar? Each stage we carry remnants of the last as we slowly transform our character. In terms of a good story, they say a good character must go through change. We get to be part of the greatest story, God’s. Thus we ought to change…gradually.