Me: “Colin, you made a good point earlier.”

Colin: “I made a point?”

Me: “When I asked you, ‘Why in the world would you want to drive for 30 hours one-way to take an antique coffin to Las Vegas?’ and you said, ‘I like the drive. It’s interesting.’  I think you nailed it.”

So begins our random vision quest….or at least, that’s the way I’m looking at it, because maybe put that way it sounds a little more cool than crazy.  We are driving a civil-war era coffin to Las Vegas to appear on the History Channel’s popular reality TV show, Pawn Stars.

Let’s just unpack that….
The coffin has been in our possession for about 15 years. It is the ultimate conversation starter, if you’re not too concerned with what people think about how you decorate your living room. It is made of cast iron, form fitting, and resembling an Egyptian sarcophagus with a glass window for viewing the face of the deceased. To our knowledge it has never been used, except once in worship, when we wrote down our problems and dropped them in as a way to put to death those things that hold us back from living life. It’s a reminder, and a symbol, and a place holder. For an empty box, that coffin holds a lot of stories. I guess, when you look at it that way, they all do.

We are taking it to Vegas because that’s where Gold & Silver Pawn Shop is located, and that shop is the subject of the show, Pawn Stars. One day, on a whim, my hubby sent them a note. The rest is history.

We packed up in the old family van…the hubby, me, the boy, and the coffin, and headed out. Need I say more? Sometimes you’ve just got to go with it.

Whether it’s the day-to-day discernment or the once in a lifetime trip, there is something about being shaped by the journey itself. Once you arrive, you are not who you were when you started out. I believe –with every achy muscle, junk food snack and diet coke, mile after mile after mile – it’s worth the trip. In the end, it’s the story that matters, regardless of the container it’s packed in.