Panning for Gold
John Fischer

As I write this, I am bouncing along in the passenger seat of my son’s pickup truck with a comforter on my lap to stay warm due to a malfunctioning heater. We are in the first hour of a 30-hour driving marathon from southern California to St Louis, MO where he will be taking on a new job position. All his earthly possessions are packed into this truck.

I am honored that he wanted me to accompany him on this trip; I also understand the decision not to fix the heater as a reasonable money saver that works for southern California, but St Louis may beg the question, not to mention what weather we will face between here and there I’m already glad we went back for the comforter I currently have wrapped around my legs.

Mostly I am looking forward to some quality time with my son. As a child, I remember long car trips in the summer as the only time I really felt I had my whole family to myself. We were always so busy with different schedules that it took a summer vacation and the inside of a car to bring us together. The doors were shut; we were all in one place; no one could leave. It’s pretty pathetic when you think that it takes some sort of entrapment to force us to experience one of the primary purposes for our existence.

Family is what we were made for. This is one of those instances where we get so busy with living we forget what life is for. Life is for relationships. Measure the time spent in real conversation as golden and learn to pan for it. You may discover you have to sift through a lot of meaningless dribble to find it, but if you are tuned into the value of real relationships, you will be able to spot the treasure more often, and when you do, bring it out into the open. We cannot always determine when we will find it, but we need to take advantage of it when we do.

Come to think of it, I don’t think anyone in my family growing up was consciously panning for the gold in our relationships. We were just together once in a while and what happened, happened. I truly think we missed a lot of golden opportunities because no one was looking for the treasure. You have to probe and be willing to probe yourself in order to find out what is really in the heart but there is always a treasure waiting.

And honestly, we shouldn’t have to be trapped together in order to experience something so good.

PDL