Chonda Pierce - Roadkill on the Highway to Heaven

Other Books by Chonda Pierce
Its Always Darkest Before the Fun Comes Up
Chonda Pierce on Her Soapbox
I Can See Myself in His Eyeballs

ZONDERVAN

Roadkill on the Highway to Heaven
Copyright 2006 by Chonda Pierce

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ePub Edition June 2009 ISBN: 0-310-86378-3

Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pierce, Chonda.

Roadkill on the highway to heaven / Chonda Pierce.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-310-23527-9
ISBN-10: 0-310-23527-8

1. Pierce, Chonda. 2. Christian biographyUnited States. 3. Humorists,

AmericanBiography. 4. Christian lifeAnecdotes. I. Title.

BR1725.P514A3 200
242.02'07dc22

2006004765

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in association with the literary agency of Wolgemuth & Associates, Inc.

Unless otherwise marked, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible: Todays New International Version. TNIV. Copyright 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Interior design by Beth Shagene

Contents

W e have a routine when its time for my wife to go on the road. First of all, Ill drag out a suitcase from the attic, digging it out of the fiberglass insulation much like an archeologist unearths a T. rex femur bone. Then Ill go check the weather in the city shes going to and report back so shell know how to pack.

For years now, Chonda has lugged around suitcases that were always too heavy and worn shoes that were never made for traveling. Ive kissed her goodbye as shes headed out in rain, in snow, with sleep in her eyes, and with a bad case of postnasal drip. Shes hit the road shortly after the announcement of bad newslike, Weve found a suspicious-looking spot. And Ive watched her leave with a pocketful of antibiotics to fight off a nasty flu. If I had a nickel for every time I said, If I knew all the punch lines, Id go tell the jokes for you, Id have a lot of nickels.

When Chonda leaves, I circle on the calendar the date when shes coming home, and then cross out the days as they pass, like kids do when theyve got Christmas in their sights. Ive met her by myself at the airport with flowers and posters (Happy Anniversary! Happy Birthday!) and at other times with our children and flowers and posters (Happy Mothers Day!). I love her when she comes home early and shes still wearing that last flashy outfit she bought because she thought it was funky. I also love her when she has a 6 a.m. flight and has to go hag headwith a ball cap pulled low over her eyesand wearing sweatpants. I think I love her the most, though, when I see her drag herself off the bus, decked in winter flannel, wearing fuzzy slippers and fuzzy hair and fuzzy teeth, and feel her way through the front door and along a path through the furniture that will take her straight to bed.

My wife is a woman with a strong sense of commitment: she watches calendars and clocks and the Weather Channel. And shes a woman with a great sense of mission: she prays for the world and then she calls home and prays with her children (usually after I say something like, Kids? What kids?).

Shes Super Traveler. She works the crossword puzzles in the back of the flight magazines, and she can draw out, from memory, the floor plan of any of the major hotel chains. When I travel with her, shes nearly impossible to keep up with in airports. I usually have to hitch a ride on one of those golf carts and then say to the driver something like, Follow that blonde streak!

Chonda is an incredible wife and an incredible mother. She works way too hard and takes a beating out there on the road. She may laugh a lot about being roadkill, like a possum gone belly up. Truth is, Ive seen her come pretty close to being just that recently, and that scared me. Now I make her slow down, look both ways before crossing the road, and say no more often. I travel with her as much as possible. And together we are in search of the worlds most comfortable pair of traveling shoes.

This Tennessee boy has seen a lot of roadkill in his time, so believe me when I say theres none out there in all this world that I would rather kiss than my wife, Chonda.

Now be careful and come home soon. I love you.

David

P.S. Are the kids with you?

M y first experience with roadkill came at an early age. I was a little girl riding in the backseat of the car on a long family trip from Kentucky to South Carolina.

Lets play the counting game, my older sister, Charlotta, said.

Id played this game before. What you do is pick an object and then count that object all the way to your destination. The key to winning is to pick an object that youve got a good chance to see a lot of, like a water tower or a school busnot something like a three-legged dog. ( my brother, Mike, picked that one year so he wouldnt have to play along.) This particular year, I chose to count green cars. Charlotta picked towns beginning with the letter C. Mike chose tractors. (Remember, we were driving from Kentucky to South Carolina, through Tennessee.) My little sister, Cheralyn, said, Im going to count dead hogs in the road. (Remember, we were driving from Kentucky to South Carolina, through Tennessee.) I believe she counted three.

Im all grown up now, and wouldnt you know it, I live in Tennesseehome of tractors and dead hogs! The state that passed a road-kill law a few years ago, which basically says if you kill it with your car, you can keep it. I can remember all the hoopla on the local news when this law was debated. Someone actually went out and made some video of Tennessee roadkill. What I learned from that video is that there is no decent way to photograph a squashed possum. I still have a nightmarish image of one of the creatures splayed out flat on its back, its body wracked and its pink tongue lolling out the side of its mouth. Then one dayjust outside of Cincinnati, I thinkI had an epiphany: There are days when I feel just like that squashed possum. I totally identified with the roadkill.

Telling jokes around the country, believe it or not, is hard work. I have to fly for hours, I have to take a bus for days, I have to walk up steep stairs in skinny heels. In short, I sometimes take a beating. I get squashed and sideswiped andwell, you get the picture. Yet with all the trials and tribulations on the road, every now and then Ill get run over by a victory, a moment when God comes down and shows his glory. Thats what keeps me going.

The road has been tender to me and brutal to me. Perhaps it has been to you as well. Ive traveled many miles, but you dont always have to travel a long ways from home to find a struggle, do you? Perhaps youre feeling a bit like roadkill yourselffrom laps you take to and from work, from running family errands in the minivan, or from calorie-burning strolls through your neighborhood. The roads the road, right?