Relic On The Road: Anxiety Girl

The van died.

Six years ago when we took the old family van on vacation, I did not want to take it. I did not trust that van!! After 10 hours of driving, a half-mile into my turn to drive, the transmission went out! We had to have it towed, spent a day determining repairs were not worth it, and drove all over Cheboygan, MI in second gear until we found a replacement van. Cheboygan’s most expensive souvenir.

Now, six years later, when we decided to take the old family van (v.2) on a random vision quest to Las Vegas, I did not want to take it. I did not trust the van!! The first leg of our trip, we drove it 8 ½ hours through 4 states, stopping only when we absolutely had to, and arrived at a Holiday Inn in Middle-of-Nowhere Missouri at 12:30 am on Saturday night.

And when we went to park the van…the van died. No clicks, no lights, no buzzers, no nothing. And THEN someone offered us a jump, and THEN the jumper cables started smoking, and THEN we pushed the van into a parking spot and went to bed. This had potential to be VERY BAD. We didn’t even have the energy to make alternate plans.

That same day, my friend Candy posted this pic on Facebook.

Yeah baby! That’s me. I can hurdle through the possibilities and land on the least favorable conclusion in less time than it takes to turn a van key.

So you can imagine my surprise at the news the next morning that the only thing wrong with the van was one loose wire.

Who would have thought it would be so simple? That one loose wire would make or break our whole trip, would determine life or death for our family van? I suppose that depends on the wire… and if it’s the one that connects to the battery, then yeah, nothing’s going to start without it.

Have you ever felt like you’ve got a loose wire? Like somewhere, somehow something’s gotten disconnected…and the energy, that life-spark, it just fizzles and dies. No clicks, no lights, no buzzers, no nothing. No life.

I think maybe we’ve all got those loose wires…and maybe it’s actually a good thing when the time comes to get under the hood and figure out what’s coming undone.

For me, it’s a matter of trust. It is SO MUCH SAFER to sit still, sit quiet, sit…stalled. Heck, with broken wires, I don’t even have to START.

But if I’m going to trust, that means I’m going to grab hold of the power that lights up all the switches and gets me into gear again. It means I’m going to give up on revving the engine too, and let all that power simply flow through.