This Thanksgiving week, I want to pay attention to emotions, happy ones, sad ones, good ones, and not-so-good ones that are underneath the iceberg of our lives and create a person of growth, experience, and emotional intelligence. Ultimately, recognizing them needs to be carefully done because there is a difference between FEELING them versus BEING them. You are not your emotions! As you feel them, pay attention to them, and look at why you may have them, you can begin to love inwardly for the first time, then outwardly for the first time, and you will eventually find yourself healing from them more and more.
I
Like
This Truck…
I was touched and inspired as I listened to Jimmy Yeary, award-winning songwriter, tell the story along with his co-writers, Jessi Alexander and Connie Harrington, regarding the song they co-wrote, “I Drive Your Truck,” and how they penned the words of the song from a very meaningful historical and true context. These words tap into so many of my own emotions.
The writing was inspired after Connie heard an interview with a father, Paul Monti, whose son, Medal of Honor recipient, Jared Monti, was killed in Afghanistan while trying to save a fellow soldier. And so, Paul drives his son Jared’s truck so that he can feel close to him. Country artist, Lee Brice, has made the song ultra-popular and one we can all relate to in some way. To know the story is to listen to the song in a different way and in a way that can leave us all choked up.
I wonder how many of us could take the true story of this song and relate it to many areas of our own personal lives down through the years…
- A Broken Relationship —I look at your pictures to remind me of some good times
- A Death in the Family —I read all your notes and letters you wrote me all these years
- God the Father—I read your Bible to let me know all about you
- Our Kids Now Grown—I mentally recall all the memories of your experiences growing up and I smile
- A Town That Meant A lot—I drive down all the roads and feel like I felt back then
- A Childhood Home—I drive by, might even knock on the door, and I can look, taste that good food back when remember so many great memories, and cry
- College—I go back because it’s full of memories of good times and my happy place
- Your Spouse—You “drive the truck” every day as you feel, sense, and experience their compliments, their love, recall so many memories good and bad, feel their soft kiss, their embrace, their tender touch on your life, and live life together as if you were dying—living your best life to tell the story of legacy
Back in 1996, I got a call in my office at the church I was pastoring in Georgia that I needed to come to the emergency room really fast…I got there and found a result I was devastated to see…it was hard. One of my best friends in the church I was leading was there already, and her great-granddaughter was lying on the table with no life. Her parents were there and had lost all emotional consciousness and everyone was stunned living in a euphoric state for the next few hours. Eight-year-old Shante had gotten off the school bus that afternoon at her home and as she did, her backpack got caught up in the door as it closed and she tripped, fell, and was trapped under the wheels of the bus and that big old school bus unknowingly proceeded to “run over her future!” Her dad was staring out the window of his home in a frozen state as he watched this surreal event happen and he could do nothing about it.
It was a sad time emotionally. Her great-grandmother continued to be close to our family and she often told stories about her great-granddaughter. It was her way of saying, “I Drive Your Truck.” I told her one day that I think a song needed to be written about this event, heart-breaking or not, because, you see, her parents had surrendered their lives to be a follower of Jesus some years earlier but had allowed that commitment to slip by the wayside. The last words Shante’s dad heard her say were, “I know Jesus loves me.” For as long as her dad lives, he will correlate the loss of his daughter with a school bus, a backpack, and most of all, he will be reminded of Jesus being important in his daughter’s life. If the world hears this story, it might keep someone from allowing Jesus to slip away “under a bus” somewhere along the way.
A good reminder for us all…to pay attention and “Drive Somebody’s Truck” today!
