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    God's Road Warrior: Are You Going My Way?
    God's Road Warrior: Are You Going My Way?
    God's Road Warrior: Are You Going My Way?
    Ebook118 pages1 hour

    God's Road Warrior: Are You Going My Way?

    By Frank Barrera

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    About this ebook

    Traveling companions are sought and hitchhikers are welcome.

    Filled with true stories gained from years of traveling common and uncommon paths as God's Road Warrior, author Frank Barrera's insights are humorous and serious, tender and tough. From traveling the "straight and narrow" headed in the right direction...to plunging into the inevitable di
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDrawbaugh Publishing Group
    Release dateFeb 2, 2015
    ISBN9781941746103
    God's Road Warrior: Are You Going My Way?

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      Book preview

      God's Road Warrior - Frank Barrera

      CHAPTER 1

      Junk-Drawer

      What lies behind us and what lies before us are nothing compared to what lies within us.

      Ralph Waldo Emerson

      GO to your kitchen, garage, office, workshop, glove compartment or anyplace a simple drawer can collect junk. If you are like most, it’s a mess. Everyone has a messy junk drawer someplace in their life. If you were to go to my kitchen, you would find the top drawer to the right loaded with odds and ends from years of collecting. Most of the items are worthless, but way down in the bottom you would find a few pieces of unforgotten, but valuable memorabilia. Every once in a while, we get that urge to clean out that drawer and sort out all that stuff. Most of it goes in the garbage. The rest gets shuffled around and organized into places in the drawer for future cleanings. Sure, we say, I’ll use this someday, and fail to file it in the file cabinet under the sink. When we have finished our task with the cleaning it looks neat and organized, for about a minute. But within weeks, or often, days, it’s a junk drawer again. Useless pieces of string, old rubber bands, broken pencils, thumbtacks, and such fill the drawer to the overflowing point once again.

      Some companies even cash in on our inability to keep our lives neat and organized. They market little drawer keepers to help keep our junk away from other junk. Much like those special dinner plates with little dividers that keep food away from other food, some people don’t want their junk touching other pieces of junk. They work for a while but when overloaded, those little compartments seem to fade out of sight until the next bout of clean it up and throw it out hits us. Somebody is making a lot of money on our junk. But, do not despair, whenever we are looking for that piece of string or loose thumbtack, we know exactly where to run first.

      The usual cleaning takes place after we tried to fix the broken whatever. And for the last three months we couldn’t find the little tube of crazy glue. But after looking for an old rubber band in our workshop drawer, we came across the glue. It’s all connected.

      You know it’s in there, and you pull the drawer out too fast and too far and you find yourself on the floor scooping all the contents into your hands and back into the drawer. Right then and there you vow to clean out and organize that junk drawer.

      Most vehicles are no different. Everyone has a glove compartment. When was the last time you kept a pair of gloves in there? They rarely get cleaned out. Mine – it’s full. Now, newer cars and even worse, pickup trucks have even larger storage bins to hold more junk. They installed these larger compartments between the front seats to act as a catch-all for the everyday junk that seems to gather unnoticed. They have little compartments all over the vehicles now, in the doors, front and back, under the seats, along the sides of the hatchback, under the hatchback, they’re everywhere, and they’re all full! I even installed a truck box in the bed of my pickup truck, and it’s full. In there, you will find maps for many of the Northeast states, ratchet straps for holding down that piece of wood I need, rags, chains, rope and much, much more.

      Let’s take this junk-drawer idea a couple of steps up the ladder. Our minds have all stored away, in the back, some little left-over story or some little incident that made us laugh or even cry at times. Overtime, these stories build up and start taking over the space designed for far more important issues like birthdays, anniversaries or meetings we’re not supposed to be missing. We try our level best to organize these thoughts and clean them up and throw them out. Most stories are kept. They are stored way in the back somewhere. We can’t throw away old memories too quickly. But unlike the junk drawer in our kitchen or vehicle, we need most of them and want to hold onto them. We need them around as reminders of when or who made us laugh.

      These stories are part of my personal junk-drawer. It’s the stuff of over forty years that has survived the clean-it-up-and-throw-it-out syndrome that often seizes me from time to time. We have our personal junk-drawer. We seldom sit down and take the time to record these thoughts or stories on paper for fear of being laughed at. It has taken me several years to get to the point of opening my own drawer.

      Some bad memories that I have been trying to throw out for years would automatically resurface, but regardless, they’re in there with the good ones. Traveling along the roads of this great country has produced many of these memories.

      As with the cleaning out of any junk-drawer we usually start with the larger items and work our way down to the bits and pieces. As we work through the process, we find ourselves with all those little pieces way in the back.

      These stories will follow much the same process. I will start with the bigger stories and end with these little stories toward the end. Without failing, I will find something at the bottom of all that junk, and it will remind me of another Road Warrior story. It will find its way into the middle somewhere. It might not fit there exactly, but most junk doesn’t fit anyway.

      There is no rhyme or reason for any particular way this will be put together. It will just happen as I clean out. All of these stories are recollections of what happened while traveling along the roads of America. They are all true.

      I hope and pray you get out of them what I have gleaned from them through the years. One last thing, go to your car or truck. Open your glove compartment – it’s in there; the junk-drawer of our mobile life. Those that have trunks – beware!

      Roadside Assistance

      The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

      Joseph Campbell

      Maybe you’ve walked up to your spiritual junk drawer, peeked in and closed it quickly in fear of letting something out. What will others think? I came across a story; year’s back, about the game of Hide-and-Seek and how adults play this game. We want to hide, we want to be sought out, but truly confused about being found. I don’t want anybody to see. God already sees.

      The time it takes to clean out your Junk Drawer can vary. Many are afraid to do the clean up and throw it out routine. Many are afraid of what they might find. The physical junk drawers in our lives differ much from the mental or spiritual junk drawers. This apprehension keeps us always on the edge of knowing; What’s in there? Better still is, Do I want to deal with it? Many don’t.

      Some of these stories, taken out of my personal junk drawer, have been in there for over forty years. How much junk do you have in your Junk Drawer? Have you been able to open and peek inside? Can you open it? Does fear stop you from going any further? What will you do when you finally have the courage to open it?

      God is by your side every step along the way. When time came to start this book, He made a promise to me. "You open the drawer, tell

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