Here’s Hoping You Never Go Astray on Life’s Highway

There Is Hope With Every Turn

There are songs that brush past you once and vanish, and then there are songs that return years later, tapping you gently on the shoulder like an old friend who’s watched the miles roll by.

I put on Steve Wariner’s Life’s Highway again the other day, and it stirred something deeper than simple nostalgia. When I first heard it, I was a child who believed the future would arrive like a rescuer. I imagined myself the damsel in a shining story, certain that one day someone would make everything safe and steady in a way home never did.

An entire lifetime has unfolded between then and now, yet the melody still feels like yesterday.

Ten-year-old me raced through the back alleys of Salt Lake City’s avenues with my sisters, bikes when the tires held air, on foot when they didn’t. We were poor, but summer had a way of making that feel almost irrelevant. Fruit trees hung heavy over fences, and we knew exactly which yards welcomed small thieves and which garage roofs hid us best. One neighbor’s place had a cherry tree so full it swallowed the entire roof. We’d perch up there, fingers stained purple, bellies full, convinced the world below couldn’t see us.

Liberty Park was our endless kingdom. One lazy Saturday we slipped into the closed-off playground with the best rides and spun ourselves dizzy on the gyroscope, laughing until the sky tilted and the world blurred into unbridled glee.

We bent rules like willow branches, flexible enough to sway but not snap. The air itself felt generous in those days. Every block carried the memory-making scent of wet sidewalks from sprinklers, water darkening the concrete and lifting that cool, earthy perfume into the heat, always laced with the bright green snap of fresh-cut grass. It was the smell of no hurry, of endless light.

We also knew how trouble worked. Sometimes we failed and learned quickly that if Mom told us to go get the switch ourselves, it wasn’t always apprehension. There was even a flicker of relief, because if we took long enough dawdling, she might forget or cool down. But when she said, “You kids sit right there, I’m going to get one” that was worse. The waiting sharpened everything.

Absolute fear came only when Dad got involved. His storms were different, heavier, and we knew the air would change the moment his name was spoken.

The freedom wasn’t innocence so much as absence, light spilling into spaces where protection should have been. My father’s presence was more tempest than shelter, and my mother’s exhaustion left hollow gaps we learned to fill with our own wild joy.

Some days that absence sharpened. A hangover meant the door stayed locked and the house went quiet. We spent entire days outside, hungry enough to dig mustard packets from a neighbor’s trash once, the sharp tang a small rebellion against the emptiness. Even then, the wide world felt like mercy. The alleys, the parks, the roofs held us when home couldn't.

Life felt wide open, endless summer light, no urgency, no heavy consequences, just the promise of tomorrow waiting like an open road.

Years ago, a friend told me, “The straight and narrow path isn’t always straight. It twists and turns and flips back around on you.”

At the time, I resisted that idea. Scripture is careful with its language, and for good reason. A straight path is straight. A narrow way does not wander. Christ doesn't describe a looping road or a moving destination.

But living inside a life rather than studying it from a distance complicates things.

There are moments when obedience doesn't clarify the way forward but seems to narrow it. When loss interrupts what faith appeared to require. When illness rearranges the map. When doing what is right costs more than expected and offers no immediate reassurance in return. From the inside, it can feel like you’ve taken a wrong turn, even when you haven’t changed direction at all.

Scripture never promises that the road will feel straight. It promises direction. Those are not the same thing.

The path itself doesn't shift. Christ doesn't change course. The covenant doesn't meander. But the ground beneath our feet rises and falls. Valleys appear. Shadows lengthen. Fog rolls in. From ground level, that terrain can feel indistinguishable from being lost.

That is where the danger lies, confusing hardship with deviation.

Faithful walking doesn't always feel like progress. Sometimes it feels like endurance. Sometimes it feels repetitive. Sometimes it feels like putting one foot in front of the other without any sense of where the next bend leads. Scripture doesn't interpret that as failure but as faith.

This is why the line about “hope with every turn” works, if we hear it rightly. The turn isn't a departure from the way. Its a change in circumstance along the way. The road remains even when visibility doesn't.

I've learned that what feels crooked from where I’m standing isn't always deviation. Sometimes it's terrain that hasn't yet been redeemed.

Proverbs doesn't promise understanding. It promises guidance. Trust the Lord, and He will direct your paths. That promise matters most when the road ahead can't be seen clearly.

The psalmist doesn't deny the valley. He walks straight through it. Courage doesn't come from clarity, but from presence. Even there, God is with us.

Isaiah says something deeply unsettling and deeply true. God leads people by ways they did not know. Darkness becomes light. What once felt disorienting is later revealed as purposeful. The road didn't change, only the meaning.

Hebrews speaks to weary bodies and strained faith, urging us to make straight paths for our feet so that what is lame may be healed rather than pushed aside. That assumes weakness along the way. It assumes injury. It assumes strain. It doesn't assume perfection.

The covenant never promised an easy highway. It promised a faithful Guide.

Affliction doesn't mean you have left the path. Confusion doesn't mean you are lost. The work of God is not to remove every bend in the road, but to redeem what the road carries us through.

This is where the song touches me most deeply now.

I once had my life neatly mapped, a big family, a perfect marriage, perfect kids, perfect Christianity. Clean lines. Clear milestones. I believed rescue would arrive in the form of someone else making the road straight for me.

Reality corrected that map.

Marriage is harder than any script. Chronic illness reshaped what I thought I could carry. Six children became plenty, as God gently but firmly showed me. My kids are extraordinary, and they have stretched me to my edges. The dream of being perfect Christian died somewhere along the road, and thank God for that.

What remained was something truer, learning to walk the highway myself, with Christ as a steady Companion rather than a fairy-tale savior.

Trust replaced performance. Repentance replaced certainty. Endurance replaced illusion. Nothing flashy. Nothing Instagrammable. Just the raw, faithful walk.

It wasn't a derailment. It was the highway doing its still, faithful work.

Songs like this remind me that God speaks in unexpected places, not to replace revelation, but to wake us to truths we already carry.

If you listen again, notice where your own road bent. Where something ended. Where a bridge burned. Where hope stayed anyway.

I find myself journaling those turns, praying over them, sharing them with someone walking beside me. Maybe the straight and narrow path doesn't loop back on itself, but it does carry us through terrain we never would have chosen, and by grace, it still leads home.

There really is hope with every turn and not because the turn itself saves us, but because Christ does.

~ I want to say this, without rewriting the road I’ve just walked. My childhood was not easy, and much of it was shaped by absence and harm. Remembering light doesn't deny that darkness. Its how I testify that even there, something good was still reaching for us.

 As I was finishing this, I kept thinking about Lucas Jones and his poem I Met God at the Supermarket. He has a way of noticing God without posture or performance, right in the middle of ordinary life. If that resonates, his other work is worth lingering with too, especially I Saw God on the Train. I’ll link to his own recitations below. 

*Warning*  Some may find his content offensive. 😬 

May God bless your travels, steady your steps, and keep you on the highway He has promised will lead to life!