All Things Go, All Things Grow

One of my favorite things in the world to do is to travel to new places. I love driving roads I have never driven before. I love seeing new sights even if they are completely ordinary. I love remembering that the world is bigger that wherever I spend most of my days.

There are so many times that I have experienced new locations as a sacred place. God grabs my attention a little bit better because I am thrown out of routine. Getting out of your comfort zone has a knack for opening your eyes and recreating you.

It is Fall Break and today our family started the first leg of a journey to some brand new places. Before we head out into our personal frontier, our first destination was a city that all of us have been to before: Chicago. EA and I spent a Spring Break there many years ago and then we brought the boys along for another Spring Break that was cut short when the world began shutting down for Covid.

Yet this time we drove up to the Windy City and, as silly as it sounds, I really loved driving up I-54 in a part of the country I had never seen before. That stretch of Illinois was a lot of fields of wheat and some impressive looking wind farms. It was mainly flat and wide open. Having lived in a sizable city for over seven years, I appreciate those open spaces a lot more. It’s peaceful.

Being an Elder Millennial, I could not get a song out of my head as we made our way north of Chicago. Sufjan Stevens’ ode to City of Broad Shoulders played in my mind for the last hour or so of our seven hour journey. Fortunately I love that song and I did not mind the repetition at all.

You came to take us / All things go, all things go
To recreate us / All things grow, all things grow
We had our mindset / All things know, all things know
You had to find it / All things go, all things go

As the four of us travel to some new places and experience some new things together, I hope that our world becomes bigger and our hearts follow suit. All things go. All things grow.