Just recently I returned from a road trip with my daughter. For the most part the trip was for fun, to go where we hadn't been and to see what we'd never seen. Towards the end we made our way to Indiana, the state in which I grew up, long ago and far away.

    After a night of rest and relaxation, we left the hotel and proceeded to the small farming community of my youth. The first place we stopped was a restaurant my parents had managed years ago. It was located along the interstate about 5 miles from town. I stopped mainly to refuel, but went inside to look around. Instead of a restaurant, the sort that a waitress comes to your table and serves you, was a Dairy Queen -- go to the counter and place your order. The rest of the building was filled, and I do mean filled, with souvenirs and odd trinkets for travelers to buy.

    With my tank filled, we headed for the town. I hadn't been here for thirty years and didn't know what to expect. What I first noticed was that the little store my brother, sister and I would walk to buy Push-Up sherbet treats, was closed and for sale.

     One of my favorite memories was going to the library, the smell of the books and the soft whirring of the occillating fan high on a shelf. That building sat empty. It was some time before I found that the town had built a nice new library. I didn't go there.

     I wanted to show my daughter the pharmacy/soda fountain we had bought Black Cows ( they call them Root Beer Floats, in Texas) and drank sitting at small 50's like tables. It was closed for Memorial Day.

     I asked about a friend at the local newspaper. I was received rather cooly, as the secretary referred me to the Post Office to find her information. The Post Office was little help.

     From there we drove to the historic building of the town. Fortunately, someone was cleaning so we were able to go inside and look around. It was nicely furnished as though the founder and his family still lived there. It had never looked that way before. In fact it was a building the community used for a variety of purposes and was empty much of the time. It looked wonderful, but it was foreign to me.

     Next to this building was a house that I had lived in with my family just prior to leaving the area. It had been restored and looked beautiful. But it didn't look like home. 

     I drove to another house that we'd lived in. My dad had built it in 1960. He poured a concrete porch and had cemented a shiny 1960 penny in the corner to date the house.  The house had been totally changed. Gone were the limestone pieces decorating the front of the house with cedar panels above. The porch was larger and covered. Gone was the shiny 1960 penny. A couple of trees had been planted in the yard and the front yard has been made smaller to make turning the car about easier.  I wanted to go in and see the inside, but no one was home.

     A talked to only a few folk, but apart from my brother, his family and my two elderly aunts,  it seemed that no one even knew me.

     You can't go back. I remember the town and the people as they were in 1976, but the town and the people had moved on -- they no longer know me. Sure, I might have found those who would remember me, but I'd been gone too long. No one really knew me.

     It took me 30 years to go back to the place of my youth. I had not ever really wanted to go there again. Much of my past was there, the past that I wanted to free of and even to forget.

      The beautiful part of this story is, that Jesus, by His blood, has freed me from the past that I wanted to be free of. He has truly made a new creature of me. All that lies in the past was the old. Today, I'm living the new. The little town didn't know me, because I was not the girl that lived there, so long ago.

     I am delighted to have had the opportunity to return to that little farming town. I have many warm memories of growing up there.

     My favorite -- autumn, late afternoon, the fireflies dancing over the golden field of wheat beside the house my father built.