Fear and Loafing

How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing? Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

My wife and I flew down to Texas for a wedding a week or so ago. I’d been dreading the trip as I do not like to fly. It isn’t the flying that bothers me, but the pre-boarding ritual one needs to go through for the privilege of sitting in an aluminum tube for several hours, scrunched between two other souls on seats that make the small end of a baseball bat look spacious.

I know modern air travel is far faster and more comfortable than riding an ox-pulled wagon several hundreds or thousands of miles across a true wilderness on trails laughingly called roads. I know that, and yet it isn’t the journey that bothers me. It’s the “thinking” about the journey that sets my teeth on edge.

So you can imagine my amazement when we arrived at the airport and discovered, to our great delight, that having “checked in” online the previous evening, we didn’t need to deal with the kiosk at the entrance. We went directly to the baggage counter with our two over-stuffed suitcases and the friendly clerks took them, weighed them, tagged them, and set them on the conveyer, which took them through a portal toward that twilight zone bags go to play in.

For some reason, our boarding passes noted that we were trustworthy souls entitled to keep our shoes on while we made our way through the security choke point (which wasn’t choked at all), and before you knew it, we were at our gate with a ton of time to spare.

I was amazed (and the return trip was just as quick and orderly as the outbound experience had been). The reality matched up with neither my prior experiences nor the nightmare my imagination had conjured up. The process was – dare I say it – a delight!

One would think that I would know by now that fear and anxiety will always catapult my imagination over the parapet of common sense, but I have seldom let common sense get a toe-hold on the Normandy Beaches of my life. But I have also learned, once past the points of my greatest fears, to let go and move on (which I did), which allowed me to enjoy the rest of the trip.

We got to spend time with the lucky couple and many of the members of their extended families. We got to see parts of the world we’ve never seen before (the WW-II Carrier, Lexington; the Texas State Aquarium; the Alamo; and San Antonio’s famous River Walk). I also managed to discover, to my dismay, that I still have no natural sense of direction south of the Mason Dixon line. Thank goodness for the Map App on my phone. Without it, I would have truly been lost.

There were parts of Texas where even the app I was using couldn’t find a way home. She had me driving in circles on the same roads until I gave up and, looking through my windshield, followed the road signs. What a concept!

Aside from that one glitch in the system, I was bemused by my complete inability to anticipate what direction the app would have me turn as I drove anywhere and everywhere. The sky was overcast, and the land was flat, so I had no sun to guide me or geography with which to align my personal gyroscope. After a week (and I’m not exaggerating), I was finally able to drive the five blocks from where we were staying to where other members of the family were staying without the use of GPS!

Sometimes life is disconcerting and confusing. We lose our bearing, or we lose our landmarks, or we find ourselves trapped in a grayness that makes every option look wrong (or right) whether it truly is or not. It is times like that it’s nice to have an app that points north, or a guide that points us in the direction we need to go to reach our destination.

As we approach Easter once again, let’s pause and give thanks for the One in whom we can trust to always bring us home, and who IS the way, truth, and life in this, our valley.