If you don’t have to travel during Thanksgiving week, count yourself blessed. I am blessed because I got my travel in last week. The road to Greensboro, NC (and back home to Knoxville, TN) is one that I have had the opportunity to travel a few dozen times over the past year or so. This is due to the current professional duty station I’m serving in, as the comms and marketing leader for an organization called Tencarva. I work out of our Alcoa, TN location primarily, but with HQ being in Greensboro, and several marketing vendors being centrally located there as well, I have done my fair share of back and forth.
Honestly, I don’t really mind the travel. Other than being away from Megan (and Honey, our dog), I enjoy the 4-4.5 hour drive through the mountains. A healthy mix of audiobooks, podcasts, sermons, and silence make the drive go by rather quickly. Luckily, the travel for this role has not been an “every single month” type of thing, or even every quarter.
After the devastating flooding in NC and TN last year, which resulted in the closing and then still semi-closure of I-40 E or “The Gorge,” which was my typical route, I started taking I-81 N, to I-77 S, to I-74 E, which goes up through Wytheville, VA and back down into Greensboro.
The first time I was introduced to this far more scenic and easy-to-drive route, I knew I couldn’t go back. What used to be only getting exposure to the beauty of TN and NC has now become adding the beauty of mountainous and rural VA to this lineup.
I would volunteer to say I’ve driven this route 3-4 times within the past six months. There’s not too many new things I see, and last week’s travels weren’t any different. Before dropping back down into VA on the return trip home, I was approaching this large rock outcropping.
I’ve drove past it a handful of times and always wondered what the view was like up there. It is clearly visible off of I-74 E, looming in the distance and than rising up rapidly the closer you get. I had worked my way through a pretty dense, large, and weighty proposal at HQ that week, and so as Pilot Mountain (as I learned it was called) loomed in the distance, I made the decision that today was the day. That view has to be checked out.
This is the real text I sent Megan alerting her of my curious pitstop:
It’s okay to use the heart eyes emoji guys, I promise.
One of the pastors at Fellowship Church in Knoxville preached on God revealing himself through creation, and I realized I needed to let Him do that on the drive home. Over the course of a 2 miles up and 2 miles back down winding road to the Pilot Mountain overlook, I gave myself permission to breathe a little easier, roll down the windows, and just enjoy the beauty of creation in VA.
Now thankfully, I have a very loving and supportive wife, who joyfully agreed how cool it looked and was in total agreement of my curious detour. If it has been a 3+ mile detour though, I’m not sure I would have pulled the trigger on it. Two miles didn’t seem that bad, and I love creation, so it almost seemed like a no-brainer. I mean, what if I never come back to Greensboro this way?
Pilot Mountain didn’t disappoint.
I remember thinking “This was so worth it,” as these things usually are. I also remember thinking how small and insignificant the things I was worried about coming into this work trip, as well as things I was worried about coming out of it, were in comparison this vast beauty.
Matthew 6 details this pretty well.
““Therefore I tell you: Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? Consider the birds of the sky: They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they? Can any of you add one moment to his life span by worrying? And why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow: They don’t labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these. If that’s how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won’t he do much more for you #— #you of little faith? So don’t worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
Matthew 6:25-34 CSB
In case you’re counting, that’s three “don’t worry’s.” Who else needs to hear that heading into Thanksgiving week? ✋
Taking the 2-mile detour was worth it, and honestly one of the highlights of the entire trip. In reality though, it wasn’t really a detour. It was part of what the Father wanted to show me that day — and was always part of the travel plan back home.
What might look like “detours” were actually always part of the plan. Are you open to your travel plans being updated this week?
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