After a month, it was time to go home.

I put my hand on the steering wheel
and drove into the rain.

And I noticed the quiet inside me.

Leaving did not feel like losing.

I had loved deeply.
I had held new life in my hands.
I had been given a month of tending.

And now I was ready for my own life.

Real Jesus companioned me down the road.

And worship music filled the car.

For years, the music had been turned off.

My brain had needed the silence while it healed from the collapse of everything. Even music I loved could hurt then. There had been seasons when my body could not receive what my spirit had always known.

But this time,

it didn’t hurt.

It didn’t flood me.

The music played,
the rain fell against the windshield,

and my spirit kept rhythm
while we drove.

There was a floor beneath me now.

His peace.

I could be grateful for the month behind me without needing to remain inside it.

I could love the lives I was leaving without experiencing their distance as disappearance.

And I could drive toward home knowing there was life there, too.

My plants.
My rooms.
My mornings.

The ordinary life Real Jesus and I were learning to inhabit together.

So we kept driving.

Worship filling the car.
Rain on the glass.
My hand on the wheel.

And somewhere ahead,

another ordinary miracle
I had not gathered yet.