Time Stands Still

Kansas City---I planned to get as far as Pennsylvania or Washington DC in the past few weeks but something else has held me back. As I linger in the Kansas City Area I feel compelled to stay.

For one, there is a family reunion in Kansas that I do not want to miss and after checking expensive flights from various locations where I could leave my car, it seems crazy to leave just to fly back.

The other reason is that in the Kansas City area is my one and only sister who, to me, is a best friend.  With both our parents having passed away, she and her two children are my family. We are lucky to have an extended family, to see them is the first reason I am staying, but the bond of siblings is something different.

But my heart is not settled. I have spent 80+ days moving from friend to friend and yes, it has been exhausting, but I have gotten used to the pace of this road trip and the feeling of constantly moving on.

Then I hear a little voice say: “Be still and wait.”   I have always said, “God did not give me much patience, but he keeps giving me time in which to learn it.”

So I decided to let time stand still and “not count” this as a part of my 100 days. I will not look up my friends in the area and go and do. I will give her this time. She could use it, things are hard right now.

My sister and I are about as opposite as you can get.  While I was joking my way through life, she was studying. While I was playing my way through high school, she was studying.  It paid off and she quizzed out of her freshman year in college and was later recruited by a huge company before she even finished.  Her life took a path of offers laid out for her rather than seeking a direction.  Marriage, children, house, garden, travel, and career: I called her Martha Stewart. But things were about to change.  She found herself in a jail of a different kind.

Everything came crashing down from all directions. The “Christian” husband she met in church and married had totally changed halfway through their 20 year marriage.   His secret sleazy life discovered by accident, he unapologetically blamed her for his unfaithfulness and made life as hard as possible.  Then Sprint Corporation swept the Kansas City area with massive layoffs and her supervisor position was cut.  After countless job applications and very few interviews she realized that she was not even on a trajectory of making things better; of directing her own life towards any kind of happiness.  So finally she mustered the strength to put her foot down and went from a mindset of victim to empowerment.

At 52, she decided to get a divorce and become a nurse.

Not only did she do it, she won one of the government scholarships for full tuition and expenses, something over 11,000 people had applied for.  And at graduation, she was selected by the faculty as the graduate who “best demonstrates quiet strength, insightfulness, team player mentality and a willingness to be a risk-taker.”

But with all this behind her, there is something those who have made major life changes can find hard to accept and deal with. It’s the idea of being at ground zero again that comes with starting over. When you have spent a lifetime building, being responsible and making good choices, it is easy to feel that you should be at another level. 

I know. I’m living that myself and have visited so many others on this coast to coast road trip who feel similarly.

We’ve learned life is not fair. You deal with every card you are dealt and do all that you can.  Sometimes lemons seem a gift in comparison to the shit you are handed.  So you do more than you think you can.  You use the shit as fertilizer to make a garden of beauty. 

And so I stayed, got caught up on my writing and did what I do:  reorganized her apartment, did projects to help with space issues and spent time with the kids.

I might be a month behind in my planned road trip, but I promised to “let the road lead” when I left my home.  I was not aware there would be a stop sign along that road. It has been since the summer of 1978 that the two of us spent this much time together.

And time stood still.