The day of the scope is only good compared to the day before (i.e. The Day of the Prep)–it sucks, but it sucks a little less.

The first thing I realize–the first of the sucks–is that I have to ask someone to come and pick me up when it’s all over. I hate asking for help, which may be an issue I need to work on, but I had this epiphany that it’s also that I don’t expect people to show up. And that’s an issue I’ve been working on for a very long time.

Then it’s the walk to the nurses’ station to check-in and the idea slowly sinking in that you can’t fix yourself. That my personal body needs something that I can’t give it and something that’s not natural. It’s been manufactured by a guy in a white coat and now this other guy in a white coat is going to tell you to take it and behold the miracle of medical science. It’s going to fix a list of things (maybe it will, maybe it won’t) and it’s got a long list of side effects (maybe you’ll get them, many you may not).

I’m shown to my room. My own room, which is a nice thing. They all have the same little tiles in the bathroom and always in dull, drab colors. The same gown awaits me on the bed, blue and white patterned and with the same snaps and open back, yet impossible to put on every time. I take off my jewelry and put it in a specimen cup. The same kind of specimen cup that I peed into for my pregnancy test yesterday.

“I don’t see your pregnancy test results in here,” the nurse is panic flipping though my chart. I take a sharp breath in. “It says here that you are still getting your period.”

“That’s right,” I say it cautiously; I don’t know why. I try to exhale but it’s like the air is holding on, bracing itself.

She finds it. Holding it up with a sigh of relief, “It’s negative!” (She thinks she’s relieved).

I exhale. I thought maybe this was going to be some big practical joke, to have cheated motherhood all these years only to have my uterus rise up at the last minute and yell “last call!” I’d had sex a few days before and although I usually use the ever controversial pull-out method, there was a little misunderstanding.

“Did you just come in me?”

“Yeah,” from the mouth resting in the curve of my neck, “I thought you were on your period. You said something about blood.”

“Not from there.” Good lord! And then, please God, no.

This was the second close call of my sex years. All in all, not bad.

Just before they put me under the doctor asks again, “So you’re not taking anything now?”

I shake my head ‘no’ but to answer fully, I have to remove the BDSM-type mouthpiece that he’ll feed a camera on a tube through to see into my throat and stomach (and hopefully figure out what brought me to the ER), “No, and I really like it that way.”

The nurse puts it back in place and the look in his eyes says that’s all about to change. Lights out. Fade to black.

And then bright lights, a warm blanket, murmurs under masks. They’ve all seen some things, but no one’s talking. I’m wheeled back to my room and I hear a nurse describing the same things to someone new as I pass by. It’s like being in the arrival and the departure lounge.

I don’t want to land. I want to keep hovering in Lala land, far above the reality that awaits me below. This scope isn’t going to tell me anything I don’t already know. I need a treatment that’s a heavy hitter if I want to avoid these annual visits to the emergency room.

It’s not good. But it’s not as bad as the first time either, when I awoke to ulcerated dashes being drawn throughout my digestive system.

I’m tethered now. I need him now. I can’t get the drug by myself. I never wanted anything to hold me–not a marriage, not a mortgage, but now this medicine…

“I was supposed to travel,” I say during my first office visit where we talk about options and invasive procedures. They can’t get even get me in for the procedure for a month because of the pandemic. And they’re adding a big Q-tip shoved up my nose as an additional preparation.

“What, for like a week?” He clarifies.

I smile to myself. The first time explaining is the best; it plays out differently every time. “No…for like….my life.”

Registration the day of the scope has a comic interlude as the scheduler ask for an address.

“Just don’t put anything,” I offer.

“I have to put something, or you’ll look homeless.”

“What’s wrong with that? Do you think people will judge me?” That’s curiosity speaking, not challenge.

“Nooo,” she’s thoughtful, “I just don’t think it’s accurate.”

“Well, according to the state of Florida, I am.”

I like being on the fringe. I have no problem with being free of permanency and busting all the stereotypes around it. You wouldn’t think I was homeless if you saw me, and that’s good. Good to stretch our limited definitions of things by being confronted with alternative information. And I enjoy playing my part in that.

Too bad they can’t attach photos from my Out My Front Door collection. I’ve been places that cost nothing and take your breath away. I can get my camper into spaces within minutes that would never support a whole house and would take months if it could. And then, that’d be it. Your one view, day after day, year after year.

No thank you. There’s too much beauty to find and explore, and too many adventures await and many cool people are out there to meet and expand with. No matter how gorgeous a place is, I still wouldn’t want to stay there. I’d still want more. Because I only found that place by leaving a different amazing place. There’s a newness that I relish.

Movement is like my heartbeat, and I’m probably going into arrhythmia if I’m limited; if I start needing injections every few weeks and we don’t have the national healthcare to carry me.

So, adding to the logistics of where I go and where I stay and how I get there is now, “how do I get my medicine?”

How can this be?

It looks like I’m leaving Fort Zachary Taylor State Park. I should probably start looking for another place–I pull out in two days.

“The way you live gives me incredible anxiety,” my one friend says. “Never knowing where you’re going and what you’re doing …it would drive me a little crazy, I think.”

The way you live gives me anxiety.

The same places, the same schedule, the same people, living and swimming in the same way day after day–sounds like death to me. I adapt and go on auto-pilot too much; knowing the way to the grocery store and where the cheapest gas is, going to bed at the same time to get up at the same time, rudely awakened by some obnoxious sound–save for those precious couple of weeks you are graciously granted for a vacation once a year. Plodding along until you can retire and live the life you really want. Except you’ll be too old, if you even make it that far.

I want to have adventures. I want to throw myself on the wind and let the way show me the the way. Life needs full rein of me for me to be truly fulfilled. My God, the Universe, Divinity, needs to be my steering wheel and not just the spare tire in the trunk.

I didn’t mean to let it get this late–then again, I never do. I had in the back of my mind a few places, but the Women’s Village isn’t taking any campers in due to COVID.

Bonnie adding her disappointment to mine, “It’s lonely here. The village is meant to be filled with women.”

“Maybe in the fall,” I suggest

“Maybe in the fall,” echoes back.

That’s ages away.

I’ve got a scope scheduled for the eighth, so I can’t go too far away. Her place in Sugarloaf was going to be just far enough so I could write, and not so far that I had a big drive back to the hospital. Next…

I have a timeshare type thing. I own weeks and I can trade. I called to see if I could get in at the one place here in Key West.

She let me down easy before she even looked, “We rarely have openings in Key West. It’s so popular we’ve limited it to one booking only once every four years so there’s more equal opportunities….” Her voice trailed off… “Oh, wait (I can hear her puzzled look) it looks like there was a cancelation and there is a unit available the week of the fourth through the eleventh. Wow. I can’t believe it.”

I can. I’m the queen of cancelations. It’s definitely been a theme of my travels. Most of my best places have come because someone changed their mind and offered it up at about the same time I was saying I needed it. This stuff happens at a higher level. It organized for me as opposed to by me. And it feels like a gift is being bestowed. It’s the only way to fly.

And my relinquishing control and not knowing, let’s the force of wisdom come in. Life lives through me, I don’t need to tell it what to do, I just need to get out of the way. Traveling full-time makes me do that in a way that staying in one place doesn’t. In the book Vagabonding: The Art of Long-Term Travel he speaks to that in an eloquent way, of which I will attempt to summarize. He talks about the rawness of travel; being away from the comforts of home, unable to grab at the familiar opens you to something bigger. And you find who you are in this melting of your old self and opening into something new. It changes you. That’s what you really pay for.

I book the week and then a few days before at LaConcha on Duval street. Rates are pretty good for Key West, and especially for Fourth of July, but the fireworks are canceled, beaches and bars are closed, so that’s deterred some I’m sure. I’ve been here for a year, and I’ll be at Fort Zach again in August and September, I’ve had plenty of beaches and bars…and will again. Besides, I came here to write. To write and get my health right.

The places are gorgeous. LaConcha is more hotel, with a room across from the pool. It’s a holiday weekend so it turns into a raucous party there. Fireball shots being poured from the bottle on land into the mouths of the mermaids and mermen arched back to receive. No lips touch the bottle and we’re all covered in chlorine. Safe shots at a good distance.

I don’t get much writing done, but I do have a lot of fun. I’m chalking it up to a holiday and tell myself I’ll get crackin at the next place. You gotta celebrate these miracles, these serendipities–proof that Something is taking care of you and you can relax and coast a little.

I’m on my way to lunch at Rod-n-Reel on Anna Maria Island. “Do we have to swim there?” he asks as he looks over to see the location balloon in the middle of the blue water . I’ve been before so I know it’s at the end of a long pier. I also know I’m getting the onion rings. The last time I was here, two great things happened that set up this moment.

I was talking to some “stranger” about being new to the area and wanting to head down to Key West to bartend while I was waiting for my fries and he suggested I stay around and check out St. Pete’s. And as I was eating my fries, someone else told me how good the onion rings were and I decided that I would come back sometime and get those. That was about a month ago and I’m glad I stayed around. I love St. Pete’s/Clearwater and here I am with someone I like a lot and he’s taking me to lunch. Both of those guys were right.

I get a call from the ranch where my trailer is parked saying that they were worried because I didn’t come home last night and was I okay.

So, I have an interview for a crew member on a boat. And even though it goes well, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to take it. The second step is going out on the boat for free and I’m definitely going to take that! The main problem is that the U.S Coast Guard is the governing authority, a federal entity and even though medical marijuana is legal in Florida, where the ship sails from, it is not legal on a federal level and so I would have to give up my medicine to have this job. And as much as I love being on the water and being on a boat and learning more about sailing, I also want to be well. A free sail is a free sail and I’m going to go, with an open mind.

It’s an open bar. I also understood there to be food but a few drinks in I overhear another passenger ask about the food and the captain responds and motions to another boat out on the water, “that’s that boat.” Oh dear. I’m already a few sangrias in, but I figure they probably water them down since they’re free so I have another. A few sangrias later I overhear another crew member who’s bartending say to another patron, “yeah, and we don’t water them down either!” Oh dear. So I stop sipping and figure when I get off I’ll get some food to soak it all up. I end up disembarking with a group of cute, chatty guys and so I walk along with them for awhile until they wander into a loud bar and I wander off. That’s when I start to feel really sick.

I duck into the nearest place, The Key Lime Pie Company and try the bathroom door. It’s locked. And as I go to get the key, I feel I’m not going to make it. It was a messy entry into that bathroom. My body was revolting and I was completely defenseless.

I stumbled out and crossed the street to the steps of the Old City Hall where funnily enough I realize I had planned on going to an author lecture that night. I summon a little smile at that fact. I drop my shoes and crawl up a few more steps and call my friend Peggi. I could definitely use a Leo to talk me down off this ledge, er, step. We brainstorm how I can reel in this disease. She says I need to go back to the emergency room. My phone dies and I just throw it in my bag and sit there, baffled at my situation. Baffled and leaning slightly to the left, I’m thinking. I hear a voice and see a man cautiously approaching me and asking if I’m alright. “I’m not,” I tell him before I can censor myself for a cool first impression and he says he is an Uber driver and he’s going to drive me home, no charge. He helps me gather my things and gets me into the car.

We stop and he gets me a Perrier. We sit outside my camper while I hang my head out his car window, fresh air being the only thing that feels good. He rubs my back and my shoulders and that feels pretty good too. I love the strong hands of a man. I have no energy nor mental faculties to even wonder if he’s safe. Probably because I already wasn’t feeling safe just with myself, within myself. I open the door and throw up. So now I’m one of those girls. At least I made it outside. He offers me some of his medical marijuana and tells me to keep the rest. He says he has anxiety. He also says he’s an officer and I can stay parked there for the night, he’ll make sure no one bothers me.

An angel on so many fronts. A stranger’s kindness in a strange town.

“What made you stop to help me?” I ask as I crawl into my camper.

“I walked by to get a piece of pizza and when I was done, you were still there,” he said, “and your shoes were so far away from you.”

That part still cracks me up. “Your shoes were so far away from you.”

He’s very kissable. I don’t kiss him. And I don’t know why. That’s not really my style, not kissing. I love kissing. And if a guy isn’t a good kisser, then I don’t really go any farther.

And he’s got a piercing just under his bottom lip on the left side that makes his lips even more desirable. I think I’m afraid of what would happen if I closed my eyes. I already feel pretty dizzy.

I’ve got to get better so I can kiss again.

New year, new place. I always give myself two gifts for my birthday: a physical, material one and a metaphysical, ethereal one. This blog was one, one year–and business cards to actually tell people about it was another year. But this year was big, I turned 50, and so I made the grand gesture to myself of moving the farthest that I could–the end of the road. The Southernmost point, closer to Cuba than a Walmart, hanging out all chill and accepting in the middle of the Caribbean–Key West. I would smile so much every time I visited there, so why not give myself the gift of joy as I hit a milestone.

I broke up with my didn’t-do-any-grand-gesture boyfriend–the gift of freedom was the ethereal gift–and rolled on down Highway 1. My physical and ethereal gift two years ago was buying a camper. Never mind I didn’t have a place to stay, never mind I didn’t really know anyone there. I joined the Writer’s Guild and I floated around beaches by day and parked on side streets by night. And a small voice in my head gave me a subtle ultimatum: If you can’t write here, surrounded by talent and legends, then maybe you’re not a writer after all. Harsh words, I know. I can feel their sting as I write them. But it was a ‘shit or get off the pot’ situation in a couple of areas of my life, laced with a ‘now or never’ kind of urgency.

I also figured that if I’d made it this far in life, chances are I was gonna be alright. I put all my chips on it and shook the dice.

It was my second day and I was cycling around and checking Facebook to see what was happening around town. The Business Guild was having a mixer at a stately, historic mansion, seems like a good place to try and find a job. I pay my donation, stick my name tag on, mumble something as someone asks, “What business are you with?” and head to the red carpeted stairs leading to the white columned wraparound porch.

Inside, stretched across the dining room table, was a Cuban-themed buffet. I gawked at the decor–dark walls, tall windows, chandelier and green tiled fireplace. It had been maintained just as it was in the 1800s and the step back in time while I was trying to take such a giant leap forward was making my head swirl. I tried to picture them sitting there, how they looked, which fork they used for what. Then I took my backwards and forwards time travel outside to a table on the porch and grabbed a drink.

The beans and rice and plantains were reminding me of South America and how I’d thrown myself into that culture as well; another place I had started as a visitor and ended up living in.

“May we join you?” cuts through my reminiscent fog.

I nod to the short strawberry blonde and motion to the two empty chairs. Her friend joins her and since I’m too busy enjoying the taste and memories of the food, the first lady starts the conversation.

“So, how long have you been in Key West? What do you do here?”

It’s a common question in this uncommon place. I tell her this is my second day and that I don’t do anything, yet. I tell her how I live in my RV and just kind of go where the wind takes me. I tell her I want to find a part-time bartending job for the season before I leave for another volunteer gig at a state park in the Middle Keys. I throw in the ‘New Year, New You’ idea and how I like the feel of this island so I went with it.

People either think it’s cool or completely nuts, it can go either way, but she raises her eyebrows and her eyes start to light up. She shares how she’s back from visiting friends that live that way and she thinks it’s a great. Freeing. She has that look, the one that says she’d like to do it, too, but can’t because….responsibilities. A gypsy friend of mine calls them alibis.

As she stands up to excuse herself, they’re going to catch a movie, she hands me her business card. “I might have something for you. Come see me on Monday.”

She was the owner of the oldest running restaurant in Key West–Pepe’s Cafe. Harry Truman would sneak away from the Secret Service to have coffee with his constituents there.

It felt like that bet was already paying off. Like Dessa raps, “I swallowed the dice. I make my own luck now.”

I’m sitting in the last bit of sunlight on the last day of my assignment here, and the last day of the year, savoring this campsite where I can look over the ocean and over the back of my home with just a slight turn of the head. This chapter of my life that began three months ago, ….well it really began in April, …actually it began long before that but the catalyst was in April. April Fool’s Day at that and Easter too. It was this combination that inspired me to make a phone call. Even though I had already called, a few times, to see if there were any cancelations that would make it possible for V to have his birthday in the Keys. State parks start to book up eleven months ahead and, you see, I just don’t ever have that kind of lead ti

me. So I depend on things like miracles, and I remember thinking, as I first opened my eyes that morning, that if there was ever a day that was ripe with miracles, well, it would be Easter, and if ever there was a day that those said miracles would fall in my favor; that would be Easter on April Fool’s Day. Experince showed me that my windfalls and wonderous moments often came with a sense of humor.

So I whispered a little prayer and dialed. After some checking and tap tap tapping through the line, there was indeed a cancelation. Three days. Right over his birthday. If I had known then where it would all lead and that I would be sitting here now, I think my heart would have exploded.

I’m looking back over it all and wondering how often I really was able to enjoy it. Maybe I was here with the wrong guy. But maybe I wasn’t. It certainly made it better and worse in equal measure. Actually, not in equal measure; it leaned more to the worse. Maybe it was stuff I needed to learn; I have also grown so much through it. I can see that I’ve simply outgrown the relationship. I guess that’s good. I’m leveling up

I need to gather my thoughts first. Know what I want before I ask for it. I gotta get clear in my head and get it aligned with my heart.

The heart knows. The heart always knows.

And I’ve been suspecting for awhile now that I want to be alone. Well, with myself, rather. I finally know her and I think I just really wanna be with her. Alone. That’s when I feel really connected to her.

I’m not upset. I’m not angry. This isn’t some ploy to get my way. It feels like what so many people told me about. ‘I don’t think you have to worry about it,’ they would say. And that feels pretty true Like this is just how it’s happening and I’m kind of the observer, in a way. I know but I am not the one who is providing the information. It doesn’t feel ego driven. It’s coming from somewhere that I can trust.

I know it will hurt. Both of us. But it will be worse if I stay. I’m already putting up the bitch fence. I have to because I’m not honoring my truth. So I have to push him away and make it about stupid little things until I can say the big thing. And back myself up. And the big thing is that I need to go on from here on my own.

This relationship has run its course. That’s all. And that can be a good thing…like a graduation. And now I have this longing to be free; to set free. We should each get to be ourselves. I recently saw how I’ve been wanting to change him. TRYING to change him so we could fit better together and because I think I know better how he should be and who he should be. I feel awful about this now. It feels so unfair. His growth is not really my jurisdiction, mine is. And I neglect it every time I cross over to his side of the street and expend the energy I need for my own transformation. I see now I was just trying to avoid the pain of saying good-bye. And I also can see that that had made me feel responsible for him in ways that I am not. There are billions of people in this world and they all seem to eat, sleep and get by just fine without my help. Why must I think I’m responsible for someone that I’m with? Falling in love, getting together, is always a risk;there are no promises for either one of us. This is the stuff that messes with my head a bit. This is where I need strength and truth.

But I know it’s the right thing because, somewhere inside of me, I feel better. I guess I’ve been taking some time to get really in touch with that place so I can hold onto it when this all goes down and I wake with regrets and second guess myself in the middle of the night.

No anger. No regret. No grand stand of superiority. Like Jeff Buckley said, “love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujiah.” It feels like that. And this unavoidable desire to just let go.

I don’t know what to do about the financial commitment we made to RCI. Do I just let that go too? There’s $2500 we agreed six months ago to pay and it’s due in a few weeks – and I’m the only one thinking about it. I always honor my promises. I always make good on my responsibilities. Trying to be perfectly perfect. But now I find out I’ve had my license suspended over a ticket I’m sure I paid and I can feel.things.sliding. I can’t hold to it. Not all the time. This high bar that’s there, looming, making me crazy. Afraid of what will happen if I don’t get that ‘A’. I’m tired of that track.

I’ll do my best, but then I’m gonna have to let that go too. I’m only human. I can only do what I can do, the best that I can do. This trying to control, arrange and hold it all together – I can’t. Somethings are not mine to handle and I have to let them go too. I’m tired. It’s heavy, all these things I carry. It all ends up draining my battery and I’m losing focus on what is in my control. I lose clarity. I lose myself. And that connection to what knows and divinely orchestrates becomes faint.

It was the first falling together I’ve felt in a minute.  It’s mostly been falling apart – like I’m on a really long tumble dry cycle.  Even as I write this I can feel it the churn begin to turn.  Who keeps dropping the quarters in the machine, I’d like to know.  But yesterday, I could start to smell that fresh scent of clean clothes.

The day started very messy, however.  Woke up late – my phone died last night – not just battery flat died but body and soul died.  I guess the soul never dies, even on my phone.  It’s all still happening, I just can’t get to any of it.  Especially the website  I can’t remember but I’m pretty sure has the truck I can’t stop thinking about.  Better late than never they say and especially when it comes to a gorgeous spiritual fellowship on a Saturday morning, so I stop freaking out, throw on some clothes and we begin a faster drive to make up time.

The topic people are speaking of is amends making and that’s why I’m here.  I’ve been perfecting the art of asking for forgiveness and try to offer it (to and from others) all the while the idea of self-forgiveness eluded me.  But that one warm autumn day in an old train depot I’m getting ready to bike the 400 trail – the only thing I know to do in the situation I’m in – the idea was presented to me and I’ve been coming to these meetings ever since.  Sounds great doesn’t it?  Yeah, I thought so too.  But as with all paths to something new and wondrous there’s the other part, the rough and emotional part of clearing out the old and cherished.  Things that have been with me for a long time that are in the way, some even in direct contradiction to this new that I want.  It’s not easy.  Worth it, but not easy.

The company I find myself in while doing it makes it easier.  Inspires me.  “We learn to expect the best and get it!” That’s a promise.  And that promise is coming true today.  I go into this day emotional and I’m glad I’m in St. Pete.  It feels like home without the snow.  I suggest we bike to brunch – two of my favorite things together.  We head towards the water, another natural draw at times like these and pedal past a place with bright blue umbrellas and chair cushions to match.  It pulls me in.  The server is gracious, the drinks stellar and the coffee strong.  The place feels like I’m at a hotel, waking up in a strange place on vacation.  I love that feeling.  I relax into this vacation invitation and open the newspaper.  This day is full of promise.  And sunshine.

I get my phone fixed just in time to get to the car lot…in Holiday, Florida no less.  I expect the reality

I have heard this 12-step slogan at various meetings throughout my life, but it’s never really worked for me.  My answer is always “very, it’s very important”; everything is very important – can’t you tell by my intensity and investment in it?  But the other day I heard it again at an ACoA (Adult Child of Alcoholics, yes that’s me) meeting and the results the person sharing got from it, I wanted.  So when the opportunity arose from that desire in the form of Vic using the Gorilla Glue to repair  the piece of bedside table that was separating from itself while I was at work and when I came home to the glue and the problem still in the same place as when I left I asked myself, “how important is it?” and the answer was once again, “very.”  For better or for worse, almost everything is important to me.  But because I so wanted the gift of the person I heard, my mind opened and I heard another question, “what difference would it make?”  If I had come home and it was fixed, what would be different?  I had immediate answers.  It would mean that he loved me, that he listened to me, that he cared – about me and the camper, that we were partners in this, that he was a good boyfriend.  Ohhhhh, and that’s all the meaning that I’ve given it.  Hmmm, interesting.  I could feel my mind turn.  And that’s where all your pain is, I thought to myself, in that meaning.  And, so you’re a person that sets up tests; we need to deal with that.

The freedom that this revelation afforded me was priceless.  It’s like a new key was in my hand and this one turned the lock.  First of all, it did not mean all these things and it didn’t mean that he didn’t love me and didn’t care because he didn’t do them.  And if I needed hoops to be jumped through to prove that I’d made a good choice in a mate, then maybe I had a trust issue – with myself.  And most of all, worst of all, I was acting like my mother.  And I hated when I did that.

Let me feel love freely, without demands or limitations or premises, but because it’s what Is and it’s what I Am.  It needs no tests nor hoops and it certainly doesn’t need to head my demands.  That’s just not how Love rolls; not real Love anyway.  Everyday in so many ways, I learn that a little bit more.  The difference between what I think is love and what Love really is is constantly being cleared up.

In the end he fixed it, or at least started to, and when I looked over and saw it wasn’t holding, I grabbed the hammer from the toolbox and whacked it a few times so it grabbed and sealed.  What a partnership.

I swore I’d never sound like all the old people I heard say this.  Well, let me tell ya, living on wheels….it is always something.  I am one of those people.

“If you own stuff, you are always fixing stuff,” Robert says as he waits for me to hop on the back of the 4-wheeler with the tools and jack so he can fix the flat tire on my camper.  It’s true, I’m thinking, unless you rent.  Which makes me think that I’ve been a renter, and not just physically, all my life.  I borrow, I visit, I dip my toe in, but as soon as the garbage disposal doesn’t work (probably because I’ve gotten young coconut husks stuck in there again) or it gets too uncomfortable, or it’s not the right temperature, I can call someone, return it, or leave.  The responsibility isn’t mine.  But here’s the thing…..don’t I want the responsibility to be mine?  With responsibility comes great things:

• I get to choose
• I can change it if it no longer suits me….from within it.
• I have the power to decide what I want my experience to be.
• I really do call the shots and taking responsibility doesn’t make me guilty, it makes me free.
• I benefit from all the lessons learned, knowledge gained and blessings bestowed.
• I say the prayer and watch from the front row the prayer get answered so the thing that I was wishing was not happening, yeah, now I’m grateful for it.

Why would I want to give all that away?  To be a victim?  no thanks.  Out of habit?  break it.

When it was my turn to drive the 4-wheeler because Robert left the valve cap down at the garage and he was showing me the buttons and process involved to make it go forward and reverse, that critical little voice started to voice its doubts; but then another voice came in.  A loving voice, an optimistic voice, an encouraging voice; and it made me feel like I could handle it and that I would remember everything he was telling me and that I wouldn’t end up out in the pasture somewhere face down in a pile of horse poop.  And that voice was right.

So with every obstacle, there has been opportunity, and with every challenge that I cursed through, I was blessed in the end.  The other day as I walked back to our RV site at the resort to wait for the maintenance guy to figure out how to get my sway bars on now that someone had taken the handle, I seriously and impatiently asked, “Jesus, must something happen every time I take her out!?”  And I  think He answered me with Big John, who was not only able to use a big, fat wrench and a crowbar to get my truck and trailer together again, but also schooled me in alternative energy and showered me with knowledge of watts and volts and amps while I scribbled on post-it notes in awe of what is all happening and once again wondering why I ever doubt it.  The Chinese symbol for crisis is the same as the one for opportunity, I’m remembering once again and it’s making me smile.

Maybe that’s why I wasn’t that upset when Bill said, “It’s only flat on one side,” as he walked by it this morning.  Not as upset as I was when my truck wouldn’t start at the beach, or at Vic’s, or again at the beach, or at Wal-Mart.  Or when I came out of the gas station, on my way to the mechanic to replace a tire, and the radiator was running out onto the ground.  I guess these things will keep happening at the best possible time with the best possible people around completely cued up and ready to take me to the next level.

I have stepped in; all the way in.  She’s mine, all mine and if she’s not quite right then she’s mine to deal with.  And I’m starting to feel able to handle it.  I’m stepping in in other places too and I’m receiving the benefits there as well.  A Course in Miracles says that the only thing missing is what you haven’t bought.  Feels like the world is bringin it so I can do the same.