When I was in high school my youth pastor, Herman, used to pick me up at 6:30am every weekday morning. He would roll up in his Volvo station wagon and then we’d drive through the neighborhood picking up other teens who attended the local middle and high schools, and by 7 a handful of us would be climbing the stairs to the youth room where worship music and a solid 45 minutes with Jesus was waiting for us. Prayer. [It always annoyed Herman that he hadn’t come up with a cooler name for it to entice more youth to come… I think we tried “Morning Glory” for a minute but “Prayer” just stuck.]

If I’m being honest, I didn’t want to go. What teenager would want to wake up an hour earlier every morning before school? Definitely not this one. But Herman was persuasive and at the start of my Freshman year of high school I finally gave in. It took me a few weeks… or months to catch on to this new routine but eventually I fell in love with early morning prayer. Those mornings on my knees before my Jesus really shaped who I was in high school, and I wouldn’t trade those moments– or the 5:45 alarms for anything.

When you’re dedicated enough to let your youth pastor take you to school every morning, you better believe I spent the majority of my after school hours at church too. It was during those afternoons that I learned how to use a fax machine, address thousands of mailers, use Power Point, and run the sound board, how to make the temperamental church copy machine love me, discover my deep hatred for making phone calls ;] and it was also where I first learned to use Photoshop. It wasn’t all work though, I promise. There were afternoons sitting on the floor in the main church office, with the church secretary, pouring over old church photo directories to see how congregation members had changed over the last 15 years and days where the most productive thing that got done was a bunch laughing, screaming, and running down the church halls playing with Socker Boppers. I loved being at church.

Near the end of 2004, during my senior year in high school, Herman & Amy invited me over for dinner to tell me that God was moving their family from Southern California to Florida. Of course it was devastating to hear, but they decided to break the news 2 months before they were actually leaving to give everyone time to adjust to the transition… which was incredible. Herman, Amy and their two adorable kids moved away at the beginning of 2005, and this is where I finally start telling you the story that’s important for this blog… 500 words later. hahah!

The first Wednesday night we had youth service without Herman & Amy I arrived at church a few hours early, like I did every week. Even without a youth pastor there to guide us a core group of students and leaders had been trained to make everything run smoothly without them. I walked into the sound booth that night to find a note to me from Amy and the keys to their Volvo station wagon. I wept. Like, big, ugly, awful cry.

And for the past 8 years the Volvo has been a part of my life.

I stopped driving it a few years ago and passed it down to my little sister, because when you’re running a photography business and clients are counting on you to be somewhere for their session, a car that doesn’t stall on hills and at stop signs is highly preferred, and it just seemed cruel to keep making the Volvo drive to San Diego/Pasadena/Malibu… pretty much anywhere outside of my neighborhood. ;] But because my sister was driving it, I could still see it whenever I wanted.

Over the last few months the Volvo started having a hard time driving anywhere and it was retired to just stay parked on the curb. But I still got to see it every day. Then it came time for new tags and a smog check and the Volvo just couldn’t pass… so I knew it was time to say goodbye.

This last Friday I drove the Volvo for the very last time, and I big, ugly, awful cried. Much like I will never forget walking in to the sound booth in January of 2005 to find that note I will never forget my last drive in the Volvo. My eyes blurred with tears I remembered my years with that car, that started long before the keys were mine. The early morning pick ups for prayer, the drives to school, when the rearview mirror broke off and Herman decided it was just easier to hold it instead of glue it back on. The last few weeks Herman & Amy were around and they would pick me up to run errands just because every minute together was a teachable minute and they wanted me to learn as much as possible before they were gone. The day I got my licence and I picked up a bunch of youth kids just so we could drive around. Driving it to class on my first day of college. The first time it completely died while I was on the freeway. The many times it stalled at the same stop sign coming down the hill in Manhattan Beach on my way home from work. The way it started to shake [semi-violently] when I was stopped at a red light. When it started not be able to shift all the way in to “park” so to start it up again you had to push the gear shift forward and then reach through the steering wheel to turn the key. How the drivers seat had literally just fallen apart so you were pretty much only sitting on a seat cover and how the right side mirror got knocked loose so no matter how many times you pushed it back to the right spot as soon as you hit a bump in the road all you could see was the ground… through the peeling, purple colored tint in the window, of course.

And even after all of that, I will always remember how safe I felt in that car.

A thousand words later and I’m hoping no one read this far. This post is for me more than anyone else. I needed a good word vomit blog post because I feel like the last tangible thing I have to connect me to those years is gone. From here on out they’re just memories… and there’s nothing outside my front door reminding me to remember. Who would have thought a car would mean so much?

I wanted to make sure I had pictures of the Volvo before it was gone… Of course.

The stickers are from Ephraim Clothing and One Truth.

And I wanted to be a pirate. Badly.