We were headed to Aurora, Utah to see my wife’s paternal grandparents. Fourth of July weekend. The kind of trip you imagine will be uneventful — until it isn’t.
I watched in the rearview mirror as the accident I saw coming unfolded in slow motion. I’d just slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of me — who had failed to stop before hitting the car in front of them. Then, behind us, smoke rose from the tires of a car traveling way too fast. They swerved into the lane where we were, hit the car behind us, propelling us forward into the mess ahead.
Five cars. Center lane. Rush hour. The entire freeway shut down for almost three hours.
Our car had only 600 miles on it. We bought it as a gift for my wife after she finished pharmacy school with top honors. It was honestly one of those purchases you make when you’re young, proud, and think, “This is how you begin a good life.”
My wife was pregnant with our first child.
Our car looked totaled. The car behind us had been forced underneath our car — both our back tires were off the ground. The hood of our car was slightly damaged, but we didn’t hit the accident in front of us with enough force for the air bags to deploy. But our insurance company wouldn’t total the car. Ironically, it was too new. Too much potential value still left in it. So they spent the $18,000 to repair a $26,000 car.
We kept that car for nearly 17 more years.
The irony doesn’t end with the insurance logic. The real irony is that the parts of the car that bore no visible scars from that five-car pileup — the steering wheel, the seats, and the floor mats — those wore out from something else entirely: daily life.
There were places on the wheel where my thumbs had smoothed down the material from countless commutes, road trips, grocery runs, and late-night drives to get home and sleep in my own bed. That wear didn’t come from the wreck. It came from all the years after it.
As our family grew, that car became my everything vehicle. It’s funny when thoughts of that car float into my head. When nothing big is happening. When I’m folding laundry or sitting in traffic. When the kids are fine, work is busy-but-normal, and I can’t point to a single thing that would make a good story at a dinner party.
There’s a kind of fatigue that creeps in during those stretches. A low-grade frustration that maybe you’re not doing enough. Not being enough. Not becoming enough. Or worse — that what you’re doing doesn’t mean anything. That it lacks substance.
And that tension between the dramatic and the mundane is one I’ve never really known how to resolve. For most of my life, I believed you proved your worth in the big moments. The crash. The diagnosis. The deadline. The rescue.
But now, in the middle stretch of life, I’m starting to wonder if maybe we become who we are somewhere else entirely.
In 2017, I took a group of teenage boys, including my son, on a grueling multi-day hike to the summit of Kings Peak. The trip was long, chaotic, and physically draining. We had diabetics on the trail. Kids crying. Misjudged distances. Nearly fell off a cliff coming down the wrong side of a boulder field.
I prayed hard on that mountain. I also yelled. I made poor decisions and had to apologize. I tried to carry too much. I tried to be the strong one. I watched my son stay calm when I wasn’t. I watched him ask to pray when I didn’t think to. That hike should’ve been one of those capital-M moments — the kind you frame in your personal Rolodex of dinner party stories. And in some ways, it was.
But when I think about it now, what I remember most clearly isn’t the summit. It’s the feeling of my pack digging into my shoulders at mile three. The serene feeling as I watched the morning light glisten on Dollar Lake. The sound of kids playing cards while chipmunks waited for us to leave. The ache in my feet from twenty thousand regular steps. Not heroic. Not cinematic. Just real.
And maybe that’s the point.
The things that shape us aren’t always the crashes. They’re the commutes. The laundry. The thumb-worn steering wheel that says: you kept going.
I’ve spent so much of my life trying to matter. Trying to lead, to protect, to provide. Trying to be impressive, useful, remembered. As a man, there’s this deep current that tells you your worth is tied to the moments people will talk about when you’re gone. The time you saved the day. The time you held the line. The time you sacrificed everything.
If any of this resonates with you, I wrote a book you might appreciate.
But no one tells you how much strength it takes to just keep showing up.
To drive the same car for 18 years.
To fold the shirt your son will wear to school tomorrow.
To go to work again, even when you’d rather build something else.
To change the tire at 10,000 feet with the kit your wife thoughtfully put in the trunk the day before.
I don’t remember what I was wearing the day we bought that car. But I remember what my wife wore on our first date. I remember what I was doing when we got the cancer diagnosis. I remember the big things.
What I’m learning is that those big things don’t hold me up. The little ones do. The invisible, boring, quiet, faithful ones. The ones nobody says thank you for.
There’s a grace in that. And a kind of quiet mercy.
You don’t have to live every day like it’s a story worth telling. You just have to live it.
And that is enough.
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