A "John Denver" mood

I'm in a "John Denver" mood. Let me explain.

One of the bravest things I did after my divorce (when I was a chicken extraordinaire) was to get into my car one lonely Saturday while my son was at his dad's and drive off aimlessly. Now you have to understand that I am directionally-challenged to the max. Can't find my way out of a paper bag, and all that. So driving away from home and heading for wherever I felt drawn without a map or explicit directions was a leap of faith for me. As you might guess by the fact I'm writing this, I made it home intact. The key to the experience? Singing my heart out to John Denver as I drove through the beautiful Austin hill country.

Over the years, driving aimlessly and John Denver music have been essential to my sanity.

As my previous call was beginning its slow disintegration into dust, I was preparing with fear and trembling for that evening's meeting with the church's session and some presbytery representatives who were coming to help us make some decisions in this troubled time. One of the things I did not want to do was break into a puddle of goo at the meeting. Yet I was afraid that that was exactly what might happen.

Fed up with everything, I got into my car and began to drive in the general direction of the nearby Ouachita Mountains, with a John Denver CD randomly stuck into the player.

A couple of months earlier, I had discovered the joys of the online community through chat rooms, and had selected SingingSkies as my screenname from Denver's "Singing Skies and Dancing Waters", which I had only recently heard for the first time.

Not far outside of town, but into the lowest foothills, guess what song began to play. ... Right! I'm semi-mindlessly singing along when I get to the second refrain - "I am with you in singing skies ..." Whoa! That's ME! I was thunder-struck. I quit singing and began to listen closely to the words.

The third verse begins. "If my faith should falter, and I should forsake you, and find myself turning away, will you still be there? Will you still be there?" (oh, my! just exactly what I was thinking) And the answer? "I'll be with you in singing skies and dancing waters, laughing children, growing old, and in the heart and in the spirit and in the truth when it is told!" Amazing! Just exactly the message I needed at that particular moment. And with that message held close to my heart, I made it through that difficult meeting in a state of nonanxious presence, clear that I was valued and not alone, in spite of what the 'loyal opposition' would have liked me to believe.

So .... I'm in a "John Denver" mood today. Not that anything's going wrong, or I'm in a bad place emotionally, or anything negative. Yet driving aimlessly while listening to John Denver music is not economically nor ecologically wise stewardship (and I suspect it would be a dishonor to Denver's legacy of environmentalism). Plus, I've discovered that it always seems to work best when there's something other than flat around. *sigh* Guess I'm gonna have to improvise. Wish me luck!