Driving the Autobahn

Sitting in the quiet of the morning, my memory traveled back to twenty-eight years ago today, Tod and I were driving into Salzburg, Austria on Christmas Eve, newly married. Christmas market was in full bustle, bundled-up people filled the snowy streets, and our adorably small hotel had our room ready, a room, mind you, with two twin beds! This wasn’t going to work for us, so we managed to push the two heavy wooden sleigh beds together… problem solved.

Our first trip together as a married couple driving the Autobahn, holding hands, listening to U2’s Rattle and Hum with a little George Michael thrown in, all playing on cassette tapes in our rented Opel car made it pretty perfect. During those driving hours, from Salzburg into Germany, Tod and I created what became known as our "family handshake." This handshake tradition wasn’t planned, rather it was the outgrowth of holding hands for so long that, eventually, we had to make up our own amusement. That took the form of a series of silly handshake movements we would do in a specific order while trying to accomplish them at lightning speed. Hence, our family's secret handshake came into existence and became a rite of passage for each of our children.

I have certain memories, moments in time, that are emblazoned across my heart, where I am so gloriously content, so humbled at the goodness of the moment, I literally say to myself internally, “Don’t let me forget this! Lord, let me remember this moment, this feeling, forever!” Driving the autobahn with Tod that day, his handsome smile, his left hand on the steering wheel, and his right hand in mine watching the snowy world go by is one of those moments. A moment that was filled with the presence of God's sweet grace, a sacred moment. 

What my young self could not have imagined was that 26 short years later, that same silly handshake would usher in another sacred moment where God’s grace would flood into one of the hardest moments of my life with Tod. As Tod was rendered almost unable to talk after his stroke, and not knowing the extent of the damage yet, God wove His grace into that hospital room as Tod would do our handshake over and over again with me and our children letting me know he was in there. 

That handshake that connected us at the very beginning of our journey together, married life and then each one of our children, was now, yet again connecting us altogether at the end of it. Neither of us knew that our earthly life together was at its end now, but God knew, and His gentle grace knit our hearts together one last time through that precious handshake before Tod left our earthly lives and went onto his heavenly one. We will catch up to you, Tod, when God calls us each home, and I trust we will get to do our handshake again and again and again.