For twenty-seven years, I lived on the highway.
Six a.m. alarm.
Coffee strong enough to resurrect the dead.
Suit jacket riding shotgun like it had somewhere more important to be than me.
Three hours a day.
Brake lights glowing red like a mechanical prayer circle.
Thousands of us inching forward in synchronized urgency.
Cars lined up in both directions —
ants in polished metal shells,
crawling through rain, snow, August heat that made the dashboard feel like confession.
We crawled through everything.
Promotions.
Arguments we never finished.
Kids growing taller while we were measuring success in miles per hour.
Parents aging while we were racing toward meetings about strategic vision.
Day in.
Day out.
We called it drive.
We called it hustle.
We called it “doing what a man has to do.”
But highways have a way of lying to you.
They make movement feel like meaning.
Your foot is on the gas.
Your eyes are forward.
Your calendar is full.
But your soul?
Your soul is idling.
I was a faithful ant.
Lane-switcher.
Gap-finder.
Left-lane evangelist.
The left lane was salvation.
If I could just get around that SUV.
If I could just beat that light.
If I could just move three car lengths ahead — I would feel ahead.
Ahead of what?
No one knew.
But it felt holy.
I called it ambition.
God probably called it… noise.
Because somewhere along the way, I started noticing something.
The highway never ends.
There is always another exit.
Another goal.
Another rung.
Another version of “almost.”
You can spend your entire life merging.
And then
My commute suddenly ended...
I got off...actually thrown off.
Now I walk.
Every morning, I pass that same stretch of highway.
The ants are still marching.
Left lane.
Right lane.
Urgent.
Important.
I don’t judge them.
I was them.
But here’s what changed: I no longer mistake speed for purpose.
Slowing down didn’t cost me my life.
It gave it back.
It gave me conversations that don’t start with, “I have five minutes.”
It gave me mornings where the sky is something to notice, not something to drive under.
It gave me silence long enough to hear my own thoughts — which, it turns out, were not asking for a bigger platform.
They were asking for peace.
The wildest part? For years I thought I was late.
Late to success.
Late to security.
Late to the version of myself that would finally feel enough.
I wasn’t late.
I was lost.
Highways are built to move cars.
Not souls.
And if you spend your whole life racing in the left lane,
you may wake up one day and realize —You arrived exactly where you aimed.
Just not where you belong.
The only road I ever needed
didn’t have lanes.
It didn’t reward aggression.
It didn’t applaud exhaustion.
It required surrender.
It required walking.
And somewhere in the quiet, behind the noise of engines and ambition, there is a voice that says:
“This is the way. Walk in it.” — Isaiah 30:21
Here’s the part no one likes to admit...some of us don’t need a crash to wake up.
We just need the courage
to take the exit
while everyone else keeps driving.
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