My first memory of music in our home is a stack of 8-tracks on a shelf in the closet. A player, complete with AM/FM dial, sat on top of the chest of drawers in my parents’ bedroom. The numbers lit up orange when we turned the silver knob to tune in a radio station.
I can’t say that I remember listening to many 8-track cartridges. I do, however, recall the songs from country music cassette tapes in the glove compartment of our car. We would listen to the Oak Ridge Boys (El-Vi-Ra!) and Alabama on summer road trips, usually on our way to Stone Mountain Georgia or an Atlanta Braves baseball game.
The lyrics to Alabama’s “Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler)” were curious to me as a 7-year-old cruising in the backseat. “The man upstairs was listening” was a scene I pictured literally. I don’t know when I realized the truth of that line was God answering the wife’s prayer.
My memories of “Roll On” surfaced during my husband Jeff’s deployment to Afghanistan. He had returned overseas after two weeks at home in October for rest and recuperation.
In many ways, October was the home stretch. The hardest days were behind us: missed birthdays, “first” days and holidays. Jeff was due home in time for Christmas.
Two more months.
I was weary.
It was exhausting to be mom, ready on a moment’s notice to comfort and calm two girls who desperately missed their daddy. There were times during Jeff’s duty I would have traded my grown-up life to be a little girl again, listening to country music in the backseat of mom and daddy’s car.
But here I was in the front seat, steering our daughters through car line and life.
On a whim one morning I played “Roll On” through an app on my phone. As we listened, I realized the parallel we were living with the song, except our worry was a desert in Afghanistan instead of a snowbank in Illinois.
So, “Roll on” became my catch phrase for the last two months of our separation. I sang these words to push myself through the hard moments.
“Roll on highway, roll on along.
Roll on daddy ‘til you get back home.
Roll on family, roll on crew.
Roll on momma like I asked you to do…”
I believe “the man upstairs was listening” as I and our circle prayed Jeff safely home. And I believe He’s listening to us now as we wonder and worry “What’s next?”
Jeff & I have tickets to see Alabama in concert this summer. If the Coronavirus clears and we actually get to go, I’ll be the fan crying when they crank up the song “Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler).”
For more reasons than one.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”
(Philippians 4:6)
