Freezing Time

Late Saturday night, as we drove north on I-55 from a wedding in St. Louis, I found myself tired, depressed and frustrated. It was almost 11:30 p.m. and I had been in the car for more than an hour on my fourth trip in the last two days down that stretch of road that connects Montgomery County with the Gateway City. As we passed Hamel, a topic came up during a conversation with my beautiful wife Mary that almost always results in hurt feeling for one or both of us.

Agitated at the world already, one of the latest songs about how country the singer is came on the radio, thus sending my mood further down the slide. I flipped the tuner to 95.1 for the Decatur station’s Uncut program, which features music that falls just outside the mainstream for most country stations. As the already in-progress song played, I found myself just wishing I was home and that the long day and night would be over. Then four familiar words echoed through the speakers of the car. It’s a beautiful morning…

Despite the fact that the singer, Brandon Rhyder, doesn’t perform much outside of Texas, I recognized the song right away. In fact, I hear those same four words every time Mary calls me. The song Freeze Frame Time has been my ringtone for my wife for more than three years. It was also our first dance, but is even more meaningful to us than just the fact that we swayed clumsily to it on our wedding day.

The song talks about the little things in life that make life worth living. Rhyder sings about the sunrise, about his son, and about his wife, who he says “picked me up when I was down, turned me around, and you made me fly high.” The chorus explains that it’s these little moments that make Rhyder wish he could freeze frame time.

I can relate. Sometimes it seems like the entire world is spinning out of control. Demands at work and away from it occasionally take their toll on my state of mind, but the little moments like sitting on the couch with Mary asleep on my shoulder or getting a smile from my six-month old daughter, Grace, make me crave more moments like those. Those moments also make me know that no matter how bad it gets, everything is going to be okay.

And that is what the song did at that moment. Despite being more than 100 miles from Decatur, somehow that song came through as clear as a bell, just when I needed it. What are the odds that song, which most people in Central Illinois have never heard of, happens to come on the radio at just the perfect moment? Whether it was coincidence or a higher power at work, I couldn’t help but smile as those familiar lyrics played on. Despite all of the consternation and discouragement I felt minutes earlier, I knew that everything that really mattered was in the car with me at that moment, either sitting on the passenger side, holding my hand, or quietly sleeping in the back seat.

This was one of those little moments that let me know that everything was going to be okay, no matter what. And like the song says, moments like that make me wish I could freeze frame time.