Kitchen Table Wisdom

Several years ago, my husband and I took an epic road trip to South Dakota.

It was the end of September, and the trip was, in a way, my birthday present. We were going to visit his youngest son and, while we were there, experience the annual buffalo roundup at Custer State Park.

We drove.

There were moments somewhere in all those miles when I wanted to regret that particular decision. Flying certainly would have been faster. But if we had flown, we would have missed so much of what became the adventure.

We watched the landscape change through the windshield. Mountains gave way to plains. Wooded hills opened into grasslands. I had expected the plains to be flat. They weren’t. They rolled and dipped, hiding things from view and then revealing them again as we traveled.

For miles, I kept seeing what I thought were goats near the cattle. Finally, we got close enough for me to see them clearly.

They were pronghorn, the “antelope” of Home on the Range. Suddenly the song I had known most of my life wasn’t just a song anymore. I was seeing it first-hand.

And then there was Wall Drug, what I affectionately called “the great tourist trap.”

We had been seeing signs for it for what seemed like forever, so of course we had to stop. It was an experience. Would I do it again? Probably not.

Do I regret doing it once?
Not at all.
Maybe not everything worth doing once needs to be done twice.

Then came the day when we were somewhere in the Black Hills and my cell phone rang. It was the matriarch of the church I was serving. I was a long way from home, so for a moment I wondered what might have happened. I thought only an emergency would have her calling while I was on vacation.

But nothing was wrong. She had simply called to sing “Happy Birthday” to me. She didn’t need anything from her pastor. She remembered my birthday and thought it was important enough to call. I was hundreds of miles from home, and home had followed me.

That trip seemed to be full of moments like that—things I hadn’t expected finding me along the way. Maybe that was part of what made driving so worthwhile. We weren’t just getting somewhere. We were discovering things as we went.

Nothing surprised me quite like the Badlands.

Even the name seemed to warn me what to expect. And at first glance, the landscape lived up to it. I wondered how anything could live there. The terrain seemed too harsh, too barren, too unforgiving.

But then I started noticing movement. Birds nesting. Bighorn sheep deciding the road belonged to them. Prairie dogs popping up and putting on a show. Plants growing in places where it didn’t seem anything should be able to grow.

And the colors. Umbers. Ochres. Siennas. Colors I don’t ordinarily think much about were suddenly breathtaking. I thought I knew what beauty looks like.
The road showed me colors I hadn’t learned to notice yet.

And, of course, there was the buffalo, deceptively still, its power evident in every massive line.

At one point my husband decided to have a conversation with a large male buffalo near our car. His son quickly warned him not to upset it because he really didn’t want the buffalo charging the vehicle.

That was my husband—impulsive to a fault. But I wouldn’t have changed a thing about him. He kept life interesting—and challenging.

The roundup itself was magnificent.

The herd came over the hill like a mighty wave cresting. For a moment there was the thrill of watching all that power coming toward us. Then the riders shifted, turning the herd down into the valley toward the makeshift pens.

It was poetry in motion.

The wave crested and receded, ending in the thunder of hooves as the buffalo settled into the pens.

Our lives are a poetry of movement too.

We move through landscapes and relationships, beginnings and endings, decisions and consequences, grief and joy. Sometimes we choose the direction. Sometimes life sends us in another direction before we are ready.

On our final night, we were winding our way back toward the cabin we had rented in Silver City. There was one small disappointment left from our adventure.

We hadn’t seen an elk. We had almost stopped looking. And there he was.

He stood frozen in our headlights, his magnificent rack rising above his head. For a few seconds, he simply stood there. It almost seemed as though he had paused just long enough to acknowledge that we were there.

Then he disappeared into the darkness.

Looking back there were things about that trip we could have regretted.

We went over budget. Money was tight for a few months after we got home. There were moments during that long drive when an airplane sounded pretty good. Sometimes our tempers frayed from the long hours of driving.

But what would regret add?

Nothing.

It wouldn’t put the money back in the bank. It wouldn’t shorten the miles we drove or take back the impatient words we may have spoken.

And what I know now is that trip gave my husband his last opportunity to spend that kind of quality time with his youngest son.

We didn’t know that then.
We couldn’t have known.
So, I choose to be grateful we went.

There were many other things my husband and I talked about doing someday. Places we wanted to see. Adventures we thought we would take.

We didn’t get to all of them.

But regret? That’s just not something I want to hold onto. Somehow gratitude for what we were given has become stronger than regret for what we didn’t do.

Life isn’t always a bed of roses. Vacations are not flawless. I have made bad decisions. I have taken wrong turns. There are things I would absolutely do differently if I were making those choices with the wisdom I have today.

But that is precisely the point.
I have wisdom today.
I cannot use it to change yesterday.
I can use it to change what I choose today.

Even in some of the harshest parts of my story, I have eventually discovered things for which I can be grateful. My children. My resilience. Friends and family who stood beside me. Things I discovered about myself because circumstances pushed me into places I never would have chosen to go.

That doesn’t make the painful things good. Badlands are still badlands. But look closely. Something may be growing there. Perhaps gratitude is how we loosen the soil.

Worry steals today by dragging us into tomorrow.
Regret steals today by dragging us back into yesterday.
Neither one changes anything.

Worry cannot control what will happen. Regret cannot change what has happened. But both can consume the one piece of life in which we can actually do something: today.

Jesus said, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.” (Matthew 6:34)

I think I understand those words differently now. Yesterday can teach me. Tomorrow can call me forward. But today is where I am.

Worry asks, What if?
Regret thinks, If only.
Gratitude says, thank you, and then turns my eyes back toward the road.

I took a photograph one morning on that trip. I still have it.

We had left before sunrise because we wanted to get a head start on the day’s driving. We were traveling west, so when the sun finally came up, it rose behind us.

I remember seeing that brilliant sunrise reflected in my rearview mirror and reaching for my camera.

The sun is blazing in the photograph, so bright that it almost overwhelms everything else reflected there. Across the bottom of the mirror are those familiar words:

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

I cherish that photo for what it tells me now. The past can feel very close. And there is nothing wrong with looking back. There is beauty behind me. So much beauty.

There are people I have loved. Adventures I am grateful I took. Mistakes that taught me. Hard places where something unexpected grew. There are also things I wish had been different and things I wish we’d had time to do.

Some things behind us will always be closer than they appear.
Love is one of them.
I can look back at all of it.
I just can’t keep driving with my eyes fixed on the rearview mirror.
The sunrise is behind me, but the road is still ahead, and sunset awaits.

My husband has already followed the sun over the edge of the horizon. I am still traveling.

I still have choices to make. Roads to travel. Things to try. People to love. Mistakes to make. Wisdom to gain. New beauties to discover.

Perhaps there are things waiting just beyond the next rise.

So, I will take the wisdom from yesterday. I will leave tomorrow in God’s hands. And I will be grateful for today. Then I’ll turn my eyes toward the road and keep traveling west.

No regrets.

Until we meet again.

Cathy D.