How Did I Get Here - Truth on the Road

The endless countryside is dotted with hay bales in random, yet organized rows. Then more hay bales, then meadows grasping on to the last greens of summers, then signs for rest stops, lodging and gas. Maybe a few cows and horses. Then more random hay bales.

We're probably at mile 175 of a 600 mile road trip to Pierce City, Missouri.

As rest/gas signs become fewer and fewer, my mind does what it always does: What would happen if we needed gas before the next exit? I imagine my daughter and I waiting roadside as my husband grows tinier in the distance, a lone figure walking into the sunrise with a telltale red gas container toward the next truck stop exit. 

In this imagined reality, I will myself into not complaining or being passive-aggressive (my specialty) even in the face of being stranded gas-less on some abandoned stretch of beat-up road in Wisconsin...even though my husband could've just stopped for gas when we were at a half tank, and he does have I am Captain America and I can do ALL THINGS tendencies.

Instead I decide this imagined reality would take too much energy so I just ask: 

How are we doing on gas?

Uh...we'll probably need to stop at the next exit. We've got about 50 miles left on the tank.

Ok. I tentatively, if not begrudgingly agree and swipe the imagined reality from my brain. Or at least I try to...pretty much.

That's the thing about road trips. They reveal who you are and shine a spotlight on truth in the unlikeliest of places -- like on that abandoned stretch of Wisconsin highway.

To be honest, I'm not sure if I liked who I was at that gas crisis moment.

Truth continued following us as we made our way to Pierce City, Missouri.

Our first stop was St. Louis.

Truth gurgled in the hotel's hot tub. It didn't bubble and barely made a wave. You could hear yourself talk above the gurgles, unlike a working hot tub. But my husband liked it anyway and immediately, comfortably plopped himself down.

These are my feet. Feet are weird.
Okay...maybe it's just my feet that are weird.

Soon, two other couples around our age came along. They twisted on the controllers in futility as I called out That's as good as it's going to get. More truth. They accepted that truth and plopped in with my husband anyway.

I chatted with one of the wives, and chatting somehow stumbles people upon unexpected topics. Like health challenges. She was honest about hers -- and I knew that when our eyes met, and I was honest too as we chatted. I liked her. A lot. Now my husband, her husband and her and I are Facebook friends. Which is cool because I genuinely care about them now. *waves hello*

The next day my family went on to the Gateway Arch Museum and were pleasantly surprised that history was being truthfully told.

The whole truth is everyone's truth.

All of it helped me re-discover how truth can educate us about ourselves and reveal invisible bonds of humanity that ultimately connect us.

Of course, there was even more truth revealed as we sojourned on the next day to Pierce City.

More on that later.

Almost forgot, click here for our toad trip playlist. A word of warning: it's everything from K-Pop to Country to Grunge to Prog-Rock to Yacht Rock in no certain order.