Have Your Way!

With $764 in my electronic pocket, I set off for the East Coast this morning. I’m not at all sure that it will be sufficient for gas and toll for several thousand miles, food for a week, and four nights of lodging. 

I wasn’t planning to blog about this one-week trip, but it suddenly seems final and important and more like a pilgrimage than a road trip.

First, since I am about to sign on to a year of heavy classes, this is almost certainly my last trip of the year. If I would then decide to go to medical school-still completely unclear- then it feels like this would be my last trip of the decade, maybe of my lifetime. 

Second, with the question looming of how to best spend life, and where energy should be directed, I am looking forward to chatting with some important people… My sister, my school friend and fellow nurse Cynthia, my Middle East guides, the editor of my book, a New York City friend from years ago who married a surgeon, a neighbor from years ago who owns a restaurant in Boston, but once lived down the road from me on March Rapids Avenue. 

Until now my life focus has been teaching or writing, with a job on the side as a nurse. I think I could survive medical school… But with my recent revisions of my book about the refugees, my heart has wondered again, perhaps I am first and foremost a writer. And again, I found myself wanting to go to Syria.

I know you’re all thinking it, because everyone has asked: “Are you going alone?”

The straight forward answer is that I’m never alone, not at work when I’m being yelled at, or when I’m deeply discouraged in front of my electric fireplace. 

But I know what they mean, and I think it would be fun to explore the East Coast with friends as well. But I also look forward to this: silence, anonymity, time alone staring at the ocean, and knowing I’m not alone. 

Not to mention the many people I mentioned above, and meeting my musical friends in Maine.

But yes, I was alone in Indianapolis this morning when I got out to walk in a nearly empty parking lot. It was a great place to exercise, but I have to admit it would have been a great place to kill a lone woman, complete with several ponds for disposal of the body. 

And then I drove on, through hot Ohio and took another walk amid Dayton’s tiny back roads and barking dogs and lawn mowers and a Bernie Sanders sign. 

Since I’m trying to walk a lot on this trip, I gave thanks that I have learned to walk fearlessly by living in Elkhart. I don’t mind cutting across parking lots or around dumpsters. And it’s such a great way to really see a new place.

I left a dozen or so of my dollars in Dayton in exchange for some very decent fish tacos, then moved on into dripping West Virginia. Charleston’s hillside full of houses reminded me of Lebanon, where if a giant stood at the top and kicked the topmost house, surely they would all slide downhill like dominoes.

And I thought how I had just crossed two state lines without being searched or asked for my passport, and I thought of the Syrian refugees and how they make me want to go to Syria. And yet, what a better place to be reminded of America’s bloodiest chapter than West Virginia, the offspring of the Civil War?

And we all hate construction, but I kept noticing the beautiful highways, making my travels seamless and smooth. 

Even the guard this morning at the Indianapolis Women’s Prison where I went to visit a friend, was a reminder of the beauty in our country. 

The black guard was cheerful and pleasant and let me wear my veil because it was a religious symbol and quietly in the background he was playing this music:

I lift my life, lift my life up…. I give it all in surrender… I lift my heart, lift my heart up… you can have it forever. Have your way in me! 

I am not kidding… I heard this at the prison.

As I maneuver this identity crisis, I want those words to also be my prayer.