Calamity Jane Rides Again!

It always amazes me just how much I move around with this crazy job. Last night I slept in southern Mississippi near the Gulf of Mexico, yet tomorrow night I will be in Chicago, Illinois near the shores of Lake Michigan. It's like a whirlwind, a couple more nights and I'll probably be right back down in the swamps of Louisiana.

I had to laugh at myself today, here I am giving it all I can, within the limits of the government's “Hours of Service” regulations for truck drivers, trying to get to “the Windy City”. I felt like Doris Day in “Calamity Jane” racing up to “Chicaggy” to fetch Adelaide Adams! It's silly I know, but sometimes your mind just entertains itself with silly notions like that when you spend so much time alone on the open road. I realized also that I tend to talk to myself when I'm out here all alone on the highway. I noticed it after being home for a couple of weeks during the Christmas break. You just get lonely, and sometimes the sound of your own voice helps ease the separation from your own family.

It is unnatural to be separated for such lengthy periods of time. I mean, if you didn't have a good marriage it might be alright, but every time I go home it only confirms for me that I have the finest woman God ever blessed a man with. She makes me a better man. Somehow, in a mystery, He teaches us of the depths of His grace through the trials we go through together. She not only makes me a better man, she gives me a great desire to be a better man. That can only be accomplished through the power of Christ at work within me. He has conquered so much of me, and yet the more of me that is put to death the more I realize there are greater battles to be won. One thing I know for sure is that He is the Victor.

I was reading in Joshua today and came upon the place where Joshua encountered a heavenly helper and inquired whether he was “for us or against us” - he replied simply that he was neither, he was here as commander of the Lord's army. I'm so glad that the government of His kingdom rests on His shoulders. I have proven to be a poor manager of many things, even when I was convinced I could be good. I love that He has come to be Victor over all, and I am glad that everything in me that I despise is a part of that great “all” that He will conquer.

Well, I'm rambling on and on and hopping around with so many different thoughts that I'm probably sounding incoherent. I promised to tell you about this load, and it is 45,000 pounds of wooden blocks. That's right, 40 pallets of approximately 8” x 8” wooden blocks. The gentleman who loaded me this morning said that they are used at the Caterpillar plant as spacers when building some type of flooring in one of the large pieces of equipment they manufacture there.

I'm going to bed now, going to get up early in the morning and see if I can get this load delivered tomorrow so I can move on to something else that is hopefully headed south! It's too cold up here. I'm in Steele Missouri tonight on I-55 at the Deerefield Travel Center.