I Have Not Driven That Road Since

The detour adds eleven minutes each way, and Ross has been taking it since February.

Nobody knows, and that is why it has lasted seven months. There is a second route to the same place, longer and slightly nicer, and no reason on earth for anybody to ask about it.

His wife has been in the car for it maybe twenty times and has never said anything, because why would she.

The road he goes around is a nine mile stretch with almost nothing on it. That is where the car stopped, at night, in February, with no shoulder to speak of and a bend before it, and Ross stood outside for forty minutes in the cold because standing outside felt safer than sitting in it.

Nothing happened. That is worth saying plainly. Nobody hit the car. He got picked up. It went to a garage on the Monday and somebody qualified sorted it out and it has run since.

But he has not driven that stretch again.

And here is what has actually happened over seven months, which he has only recently started to see.

It has grown.

It started as that nine miles. Then that nine miles after dark. Then he stopped offering to make the run to his mother's, because that is the natural road for it, and his brother has been doing it more.

Then in July they went away and he asked his wife to drive a section he would normally have driven, and made a reason for it, and she thought nothing of it.

That is the part that has him worried. Not the road. The way it keeps getting bigger, quietly, every accommodation small and sensible on the day, and none of them ever said out loud to another human being.

His wife said in August, "You've gone off driving."

And Ross said, "Just tired of it."

The detour is not the problem, the growing is

Let me put down what I am not doing, so nothing has to brace.

I am not going to tell you the night was nothing. Forty minutes on a dark road with no shoulder and a bend before it is a genuinely bad night, and standing outside the car was a sensible thing to do.

And I am not going to talk about what stopped it. That went to a garage in February and somebody qualified answered it then.

One plain thing first. Seven months of a life quietly getting smaller, with nobody told, is heavier than it looks from outside, and it can go further down than a detour. If there are thoughts in it about not being here, tell a person today: your wife, your brother, a doctor, or the 988 crisis line for anyone in the United States. That is not a detour from this message. It is the most important line in it.

What I want to name is the shape of the thing, because it is already half seen and half seen is the hardest place to stand.

Every single accommodation made in seven months has been reasonable.

You have not been abandoned to manage a fear by yourself, and Scripture says God has not given His people a spirit of fear. 2 Timothy 1 names what was given in its place, which is power and love and a sound mind, and the Spirit of God is what makes that a fact about a route chosen twice a day since February.

Taking a nicer road is reasonable. Skipping the run to your mother's one week is reasonable. Asking your wife to drive a section on vacation is reasonable, and married people swap driving constantly.

That is exactly why it works. Fear that asked for something unreasonable would have been refused in February. This one has only ever asked for things a sensible man would agree to, one at a time, seven months apart from end to end.

And the price has been paid in a currency nobody audits: eleven minutes twice a day, a brother doing more of the driving, one section of a highway in July.

Now here is the verse, and I want you to notice where God puts Himself in it.

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.Isaiah 41:10

I am with thee.

Present tense, and no location given.

He does not say I will be with you on the route a man picks. He does not offer a road that is safe because nothing ever happened on it. The whole sentence is about who is present, and it does not mention where.

And look at the verbs after it. Strengthen, help, uphold. Every one of them is His. There is not one instruction to the person being addressed except fear thou not, which is not a technique and is not an achievement, and which He immediately gives the reason for.

You are not on your own on any nine miles of road, and Scripture gives the presence as the answer to fear rather than a route that avoids it. It is written in Isaiah 41 fear thou not, for I am with thee, which is a presence stated in the present tense with no location attached to it, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a fact about a dark stretch in February.

You have a God who put every verb in that sentence on His own side. Isaiah 41 says I will strengthen thee, I will help thee, I will uphold thee, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that arrangement of the work the reason a man can stop bracing.

Seven months of a small tax

Here is the practical part, and it is arithmetic, and it is not meant to shame you.

Eleven minutes each way, most working days, since February.

That is somewhere near sixty hours. Two and a half days of a man's life, spent on a longer road, to avoid nine miles where a machine failed once and nothing happened.

Every one of those eleven minutes was a reasonable decision on the morning it was made, and I would have made most of them.

I am saying it because the total is the thing you cannot see from inside a single morning, and the total is the only honest measure of what the detour costs.

And there is a second cost, and it is the one that matters more than the hours.

Every time you take the long road, something in you gets confirmed. Not consciously. But the message that goes in is: that road is dangerous, and I know it, because look what I do.

Avoidance is not neutral. It is evidence, and it has been manufactured twice a day for seven months.

You were never given a fear that had to be managed by a route, and no verse anywhere offers a person safety by subtraction. Isaiah 41 has God upholding with the right hand of His righteousness, which is a hold that does not depend on which road a man is on, and the Spirit of God is what makes that hold as real on nine dark miles as on a longer way round.

And I want to say the thing about telling somebody, because that is where this actually turns.

Seven months and nobody knows.

That is not incidental. A thing nobody knows about cannot be helped, cannot be shared, and cannot be measured by anybody with a clearer head than yours at eleven at night.

Your wife has been in the car for twenty of those detours. She said in August, "You have gone off driving." She has noticed something. She has just been given nothing to attach it to.

You have people who would carry this the moment they were told, and Scripture puts help among the things God names as His own work. It is written yea, I will help thee, which is Isaiah 41 listing help as something supplied rather than something earned, and the Holy Spirit is what makes a sentence said to a wife in a kitchen part of that supply rather than a weakness.