Old Truck

by Donna Poole

I followed you home down the winding gravel roads for the last time and watched you through my dusty windshield.

You’d never know to look at you that you were at the end of your days, and this was your last trip home. As you navigated those backroads home with ease, I thought about all those other roads you’d traveled and the sights you’d seen I’ll never see.

You were quite the boss truck back in your day, all muscle and no fluff, a 1999 Ford F-350 diesel. You could haul! When my sister, Eve, and my brother-in-law, Bruce owned you, you pulled their fifth wheel many times from Michigan to Florida, New York, Maine, Texas, and the epitome of trips, up the Alaskan highway. You did it all with ease and modesty.

No thanks needed here, folks, just doing my job.

***

Eve and Bruce loved camping, and they loved serving others. Many of their trips were to work with Wycliffe Missions. Whether for fun or ministry, they could always count on their truck.

And then Eve got sick. In the early years of her cancer, she could still go camping, but then she became too weak. And then God took Eve home to heaven. Without Eve the camper was just an empty shell of bittersweet memories; Bruce sold the fifth wheel and the truck.

We bought the truck. I wished we’d named her, but we always just called her “Old Truck.”

It was love at first sight; my husband, John, had always wanted a truck. Just about everyone has one in the farming community where he’s a pastor. True, John didn’t need one for the reasons the farmers, contractors, and the electrician in our church did, but he wanted one. I don’t suppose I’ll ever forget the joy on his face the first time he drove that five on the floor stick shift.

Old Truck pulled Old Bertha, our 1988 fifth wheel, on our many camping adventures. Our two favorite places were Brown Country State Park in Indiana, and the channel campground in Muskegon, Michigan. Old Truck did many other things for us too, hauled lumber, brought home pipes and other items necessary for home repairs, and made countless trips to the scrap metal place and the dump. This summer she pulled down an old garage the insurance company said had to go.

And then our trusted mechanic told us Old Truck could no longer pull Bertha; the frame and spring mount were too rusted. Our hearts sank. I don’t suppose anyone likes camping more than we do. I think we could still manage tent camping; John doesn’t agree. We took Old Truck for a second opinion, and then a third. And that’s when we found out she wasn’t safe to even drive anymore. The steering has rusted parts, and the right front wheel is about ready to fall off.

And so, we began her last slow trip home down the back roads, John driving Old Truck, and me following in the car. A few younger, stronger, more attractive trucks gunned it and roared by us as we slowly babied the old lady home. But they don’t know her history. They don’t know all she’s done and seen; the joy she’s brought to her owners.

I imagined Old Truck wistfully watching the landscape we slowly passed, corn ready to be harvested, bean fields already empty, the sky a brilliant blue, and a few trees still bright with color.

And then I cried.

I knew I was crying about more than Old Truck. Rust, decay, loss, death; they are such foreign intruders, aren’t they? The enemies! We weren’t created for them. We weren’t made to age and die. God made us to live eternally young in a garden where even the bean plants never rusted.  

And yet there is hope.

For God’s children, because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, there will one day be a new heaven—and a new earth!

Hold on a while longer, dear friends. Joy comes in the morning! –Psalm 30:5

Young Again

by Donna Poole

“I hate being old,” I heard her

 eighty-seven years say.

Why? Why do we mourn the

passing of our youth,

The prune-ing, rasin-ing,

Sagging

Bagging

Freckling

Veining

Of our skin when graying

happens to us all?

Our spirits sigh protest.

Dreams of ocean breeze and

morning dew and worship of a

newborn’s skin all whisper

The same truth.

We were not born to age—

To creak

To stoop

To slow

To stop.

Eden birthed us to eternal youth.

When young eyes hungered for

poison fruit

Sin and Satan stole the

Breathless freshness of our

treasure.

A cloud hid the shamed face of’

the sun,

And earth wept and grew her

first gray hair.

The lost will be found.

Our earth—

And we, her children, will yet be

young again.

Gloriously

Goldenly

Sweetly

Young again

In the newborn kingdom of our

God.

And who knows? Maybe in that new earth there will be a boss truck, all muscle and no fluff, a 1999 Ford F-350 diesel for an old preacher, now young again, to drive. If not that, something far better waits for him, I know.

But for now, I follow John down the dirt road. I can see the back of his head with his gray hair; I can’t see his face. But I know he’s sad because he’s driving Old Truck for the last time.

And I cry.