daily mercies

I don’t know why but I was thinking the last couple of days about that feeling when I’m leaving one place for another. I’ve moved a few times from Canada to different places in Mexico so I guess the feeling is familiar to me. I also remember that feeling vividly when I was traveling through Mexico and hitchhiking through different cities randomly. That last drive when I’m looking out the window of the car – everything seems to take on this glow and all the ugly becomes beautiful because I am already traveling through a memory. It’s like I’m already gone and am nostalgically re-visiting an old photo of the past. And I feel so sad, thinking I will not see this part of the world, maybe never again, but that’s mixed with the excitement that I am going to another part of this big crazy beautiful world. These thoughts that seem to come up out of nowhere and float around in my head….

Then this morning I had this urge to read something from Anne Lamotte. I haven’t read her books yet but do find whatever I stumble upon on the internet to be interesting, they grab hold of my attention. Sometimes the urge arises to read an article, an interview, something from a particular author… so I googled her name and came across this article she’d written for Salon.com (I really need to learn how to do those link thingees), and in it she describes how some members of her church commonly say to someone who’s going on a journey, “Traveling mercies” – be safe, notice beauty, enjoy the journey, God is with you. It was a funny feeling to realize, yes, that’s it – that feeling of leaving of a place, it’s when I allow myself to really see the beauty no matter what’s happened and grasp that sense of Life being so much grander than the difficulties I tend to fixate on in daily life. It’s a sort of detachment that allows me to breathe it all in (instead of being breathless and having it all stuck in a big knot in my throat), and embrace the ugly and lovely. Be safe, notice beauty, enjoy my journey, God is with me. Traveling mercies always, everyday.