Somewhere along the way, this journey stopped following a straight road.
If you’ve been traveling with me through these Chronicles from the beginning, you may have noticed that we started out walking. There were paths, pebbles, backpacks, trail markers, and plenty of wandering around wondering where in the world God was taking me. Then came a camper, eleven states, flat tires, unexpected stops, divine appointments, and enough detours to establish one thing pretty clearly: I am apparently not qualified to give directions.
But by the time we reached Hart, something had changed. Chronicle 18, Awakened, brought me to a decision I couldn't take back. We were going to sell our house. We were going to move. What had begun as a strange pull toward a place I barely understood was becoming home.
I had spent so much time asking God where we were going that I hadn't realized there would come a point when He would ask me to look at where I had been. And that's where the rear-view mirror came in. A rear-view mirror isn't there so you can drive backward. It's there because sometimes you need to understand what's behind you while you're still moving forward.
From Hart, pieces of my life began looking different. Things I had experienced years apart started bumping into one another. Moments I thought were finished suddenly had something more to say. Decisions I'd made, wounds I'd carried, relationships I'd struggled through, and beliefs I didn't even realize I'd formed began appearing in the mirror. The road behind me hadn't changed. But my view of it had.
So I should probably warn you about something before we go any farther: if you're expecting the rest of this story to unfold in a nice, neat chronological line, you're about to be disappointed. Nick and I grew up watching Back to the Future, and there's a moment at the end when Doc Brown essentially announces that where they're headed, roads aren't going to be necessary. Apparently Doc Brown knew something about writing memoirs.
Because from here, we may jump from Hart to Kalamazoo, from adulthood to childhood, from something that happened twenty years ago to something God showed me over a cup of coffee last Tuesday. We may look backward, sideways, and occasionally wonder how in the world one memory has anything to do with another.
I promise I'm not lost.
Okay. That's probably too strong of a promise.
Let's go with: God knows where we're going. 🤣
Because I've learned something about walking with Him. He doesn't always reveal the destination before He starts connecting the dots. Sometimes He lets you carry pieces of the story for years before showing you they belong together.
That's what Rear View Mirror is about. This isn't an attempt to rewrite my past with everything I know now. I want you to meet the woman I was in those moments—the one who didn't know what was underneath her reactions, didn't understand why certain things hurt so badly, and sometimes blamed the wrong thing entirely. But every once in a while, we'll look at her from where I'm standing now.
Because hindsight has a way of revealing things the windshield couldn't.
And somewhere in all that looking back, I began noticing something else. There was a thread. I couldn't see where it started yet. I certainly didn't know where it would lead. But experiences I had filed away in completely different compartments of my life weren't nearly as separate as I'd thought.
So we're going to follow them. Not necessarily in order. Not always on a road. And definitely not with me holding the map. But don't worry if the timeline jumps.
The thread won't.
I wasn't going backward. I was just finally far enough forward to see what had been behind me all along.
Go ahead. Take a look in the mirror.