Just Keep Driving

A Texas Highway in much lighter skies

The road was empty, black and shiny. Wind whipped rain in thick sheets in front of my eyes challenging the strength of my windshield wipers. It was north Texas in May of 1988. I was driving to Lubbock to meet my new co-workers at St. Mary of the Plains hospital. I was driving toward a new direction in nursing. Turning back to the safety of home and family in Canada never entered my mind. Finding safe haven in this wild, black storm was definitely on my mind, but the little town of Happy was rolled up against the weather and the night. No cell phone, no radio in my little car and no knowledge that I was driving through ‘Tornado Alley’. At the edge of a tornado.

I only knew that Lubbock was closer than even my uncle’s in Colorado, much less Canada. Stopping on the road until the storm passed was not an option, although that thought washed through my head as fast as the rain washed across my windshield. Stopping on the road had the potential of picking me up and sending me to Kansas or Oklahoma or into a very watery ditch with no assistance in sight.

Why am I retelling this story? One I have shared more than once? I have felt in the past few weeks as though I am back in that little car in the middle of a storm. Not knowing for certain what lies front of me and seeing how far away in years I have come, puts me firmly in the seat of my own tiny life. The spot where my size eight feet are right now only takes up a small rectangle on this earth. The storm? All the what if's and could be’s and should have’s crowding around me, each one clamouring for attention. When I put myself back in my little car in May of 1988, my final decision was to just keep driving. To stop on this metaphorical road could mean being blown away by unknown forces in our society’s support systems. And this is fear. Fear that can paralyze and only lead to more clamouring thoughts. So today, I’ll just keep driving, learning and living.

“Don’t be afraid of your fears. They’re not there to scare you. 

They’re there to let you know that something is worth it.”

~ C. JoyBell C., writer, philosopher