Road Signs | He's Taken Leave

It’s been bugging me for a couple of weeks now. I asked the Lovely Lady who lives with me how long it had been there. She lived on this street growing up, and she tells me she can’t remember.

I don’t really like it, but there’s nothing I can do about it. They say you can’t fight city hall, and they’re the ones who put the sign there, however long ago.

What I’m really struggling with isn’t that there’s a sign there, at the end of our road. It’s just that I don’t really like the message. We used to have signs like “Dead End” at the end of roads that went nowhere, but I think that may be offensive now. It may have been triggering to some drivers, so we say the same thing with different words instead.

Yeah. Like this one isn’t. Triggering, that is.

The big yellow sign at the entrance to our neighborhood says the words I’m wrestling with.

NO OUTLET.

I can’t think long about it without hearing the words to an old rock anthem from my teenage years in my head: “You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.” (Never mind that I couldn’t begin to explain what Hotel California was about, I still have the words catalogued in my old Boomer brain.)

I sat and talked with my professor friends last week about it (the sign, not the rock song). As is common, our conversation veered away from the subject too soon to come to any solid conclusion, so I’m still worried about the connotations. I’ll ask them again today, but I’m not counting on any conclusions this time, either.

You’re laughing at me, aren’t you? What a doofus, worried about a traffic sign! There’s no hidden message, old man!

Ah. But there is. And it doesn’t have much to do with the traffic on our little one-block-long road. I do console myself with the thought that, since the road is actually a cul-de-sac, there is a circle at the end of that single block for cars to turn around and, looking chagrined, make their way back to the stop sign and go on their way to find a road that really does lead somewhere.

I guess what I’m saying is, I usually think words have more meaning than what the casual bystander applies to them.

I wrote, years ago, about a pond a few miles down the highway from the lovely little burg I live in. The first time I ever saw it, in the late summer of 1975, the pond was a lovely shade of green. Almost electric green.

I’ve seen the pond many times since that day. It’s almost always green. Nobody would ever drink the water from it. They wouldn’t even dip their toes in for a “paddle”(as our island-dwelling cousins across the Atlantic would call it), much less swim in it.

But sometimes, the water is clear. Beautiful, sparkling. Clean. It’s almost always in the spring when I notice it like that. I have seen people swimming in it then. They sit on benches near its edge and read books as they soak up the sun.

You know the difference between the lovely clear water and the ugly green stuff, don’t you?

Yep.

NO OUTLET.

In the springtime, the rains raise the level so it overflows its banks, and all the grotesque green algae is washed away as if it had never existed.

I remember seeing a poster in the youth room of the little brick church I was raised in down in the Rio Grande Valley, back in the last century. It asked, “Do you know why the Dead Sea is dead?” And then it answered its own query with the words, “Everything flows into it, and nothing flows out.”

NO OUTLET

I’ll admit it. Once in a while, I think the sign just might accurately describe the lovely little neighborhood in which I dwell with the Lovely Lady.

You know, like that phrase from the Hotel California song.

Most of my neighbors have lived here for a lifetime. It’s what one might call “an aging neighborhood.” And I like that. They are good neighbors. And they’re like me. Aging.

It is good to grow old together. I’m coming to realize that with new clarity over the last several years.

But we’re not stuck. It we want, we can check out AND we can leave.

I still think there’s more to learn from the sign.

And suddenly, my brain is trying to recall another old song. You won’t have heard it on the Top 40 station your transistor radio was tuned to back in the 1970s, since I remember it from church, but I can only hear the tune and a few disconnected words echoing in the back of my gray matter.

And now you begin to understand the disadvantages of growing old. In the absence of any real lyrics, I’ll tell you the one phrase I remember distinctly:

“I want to bloom, bloom, bloom where I’m planted.”

I’m not going to preach at anyone. We all know where we live. Where we work. Where we serve.

Sometimes, all of those can feel like a dead end.

Sorry—like no outlet.

I hear younger friends talk about dead-end jobs. I know what they’re talking about—a job that won’t take them anywhere.

But I also know that there are so many opportunities in those situations to serve and to demonstrate the love that God puts in our hearts. Those jobs are almost certainly the best place for us to be the hands and feet of God to other folks who, perhaps, are even more discouraged than we are at our circumstances.

The same is true of any other situation you could describe as having no way out.

The apostle whose name I bear was dragged to another country, thrown into a room, and chained to his bed. And there, he did some of his best ministry. He spoke truth to his captors. His friends in the faith were encouraged to do the same.

“I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that my situation has actually turned out to advance the gospel.” (Philippians 1:12, NET)

No outlet?

More like a garden just waiting to be tended and to reap the harvest.

He has poured an unending stream of living water into us, expecting it to become a river of blessing and service for those around us.

Regardless of our inability to see how we move on from here, there is blessing to be had, and blessing to be shared.

I’m going to ignore that sign.

Mr. Tolkien was right.

The road does go ever, ever on.

On the last day, the climax of the festival, Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds, “Anyone who is thirsty may come to me! Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.’” (John 17:37-38, NLT)

We gotta get out of this place
If it’s the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
Girl, there’s a better life for me and you.
(from We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, by Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann)