White Lines
- Jill Riley
- Jun 5
- 3 min read
There is just something about the mesmerizing white lines of an interstate or highway that seems to lull me into a certain kind of freedom I can’t resist. Yesterday, I posted a black and white picture (below in color) of a One Word Art Journal I did at an event that I played music for, during one of my many road trips. I shared that there is a hidden word in it. The assignment was to think of one word you wanted to focus on in your life. I had just come from Santa Monica beach, where I sat alone the morning I was leaving. As I watched the sunrise, the Lord asked me a crucial question. This question and my answer would eventually lead me to where I am today.
The question was regarding three groups of people in my life at the time and how I would feel if those particular groups of people were no longer in my life. Within each group, the predominant leaders, so to speak - the “leaders” of each “pack” had this in common: They were consistently disloyal, dishonoring, and dishonest people. They were also manipulative, exploitative, and in their constant lying and twisting of truth, deeply controlling. The conundrum was that to walk away from the “leaders,” I would most likely lose the “pack,” which contained members I did not want to lose. Still, this was the question the Lord laid before me. After imagining what that would really look like, and as I imagined it, letting myself feel it, I could only feel one word:
FREE
This was no flippant session with the Lord. This was serious life business. He did not relent until I could get to the bottom of my emotional bank in looking into this, feeling what I felt, and coming to a concrete conclusion within myself. It would be many years before I would get there, but I am now here. After leaving the beach that morning, within a year, I walked right into a marriage that would eventually cause an urgent need to finally be free from this kind of relationship. I was married to the most insidious and severe version of this type of person that I had ever experienced in my life. And I walked into it with my eyes wide open. I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. So, why did I do this? It became critical to learn why I attract and am attracted to this type of person. It has taken quite a process to understand the answers, but I now fully understand it, and once it was finally understood, I was finally free.
God made it clear that I would be doing this road trip in May of this year, and even gave me exact dates. Whether I had any house concerts or shows lined up or not, He was clear with me that I was going no matter what, and that I was to just trust Him. Three days into this road trip, a friend let me know that my ex-husband of one month and a few days had announced on Facebook that he was remarried. I was not all that surprised. I had known about her because while he was searching for answers for our marriage through seemingly sincere and dramatic tears only weeks before, he had also let me know about her. I have come to understand that this type of thing is a complex part of his particular pattern of pain and suffering. While understanding this to be a symptom of a deep-rooted, repeating pain cycle for him, this news ultimately served to solidify the freedom I was now finally flying in. I was able to lay all of that at the feet of Jesus, and this three-week road trip wound up being the best road trip of my life. Hands down!
More to come…
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Speaking of road trips, in 2017, I did a string of house concerts all the way from Santa Monica, California, to Raleigh, North Carolina. "I-40 Coast to Coast." One of the house concerts was a One Word Art Journal event where I played songs while women created their works of art, and then I participated as well. The bottom page represented California, and the top represented North Carolina. If you look close, you'll find a hidden word. Its significance is super important, and I'll talk about it in the upcoming blog series all about my latest road trip.
Can you find the hidden word? FREE