Summary: It was the third month since we'd last spoken or seen each other, leaving the most recent wounds to fester and scar. I was on the road, heading towards Richmond. And as I drove with the radio low, I tried to work out just what had happened, why things had gone the way they did, how this was neither what we'd hoped for nor every expected. I talked all of it out aloud, as though there were someone alongside next to me in the car. I stopped on the way even though there was no need. I just sat there, still, working over every slight like something stuck in the teeth. I'd only been given an address, no name or destination. "It's just off 95," she'd typed, "so it will be convenient for us both." The slightly nagging voice in my GPS told me to get off at Exit 89 in one mile, and after announcing my obedience every few hundred yards, she told me my destination would be on the left. Even in the most litigious, operatic of families, there comes a point where the juice is no longer worth the squeeze and you stop arguing. But since fighting is all you know how to do, you stop talking altogether. That's the place my mon and I were at. It was going on the third month when she sent me a message, "Let's meet for dinner somewhere." I know I'm the "reverend." I'm the professional Christian. I'm the one with the Bible Knowledge in my head and the Holy Spirit in my heart. But the meal wasn't my initiative. The invitation came from her, not me. I replied back to her, "Sure" and I suggested a couple dates and asked for a destination. She sent back only an address, A seemingly random place along the road. I didn't even try to find it on a map. I replied, "Okay." And then with much sarcasm and equal parts cynicism, I entered the date in my iPhone Calendar along with the title: "Reconciliation Dinner."
