A Story From the Road
19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
Most of us have gotten the “call”. The one where the person on the other end of the phone says, “you need to come, now!”
I answered that call several years ago when my sister called on a Monday morning to let me know my mother was being loaded onto an ambulance and would be taken to the hospital. While packing a few things, I learned that Mom wouldn’t be at the county hospital, but be taken to a bigger hospital in Des Moines.
I loaded my car and hit the road for the next three hours. My plan was to get there and find out what was going on. Traffic had other plans for me. The first hour was easy but as I entered the interstate in Omaha the stress of the situation and the additional traffic heightened my already elevated level of anxiety. Each of my sister’s phone calls came at a time when my attention needed to be on the road. It was funny I felt so alone surrounded by so many other travelers.
As I merged onto I80 at the 680 split, I began to smell smoke. My first thought was someone was burning a field or some brush nearby. I assumed I would keep driving and the smell would gradually disappear. I was wrong. After several miles the smoky smell lifted a memory to my imagination.
My father passed away about 15 years before this. For many of my younger years, Dad was a pipe smoker. Carter Hall was his tobacco of choice. Until he quit smoking, there was never an evening after coming in from the field that he didn’t fill and tamp down tobacco in the bowl of his pipe and light it. Carter Hall, that was it!
As I imagined the smell of Dad’s tobacco filling the car, the stress immediately left my body. Was it the slower, deeper breaths my body was taking in as I tried to catch enough to recognize the smell that slowed my heart rate and loosened my fingers from the steering wheel? I don’t know. I do know that in that moment I felt I was not alone.
I won’t say the spirit of my father was in the passenger seat that day, but I do believe that God can reach us through our imaginations. Wasn’t Joseph warned in a dream to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt? And didn’t he again dream that it was safe to return? I think if we examine our dreams, memories, and imaginations a little, we discover a connection to something holy and divine.
Just to let you know, Mom spent several days in the cardiac unit. Her blood pressure was dangerously high leaving a risk for a heart attack or stroke. Later a case of pancreatitis was diagnosed. She had been sick all weekend and was severely dehydrated. About a week later she was released to go home.
There may be some who want my words to offer certainty. Personally, I don’t want a faith with all the answers. I want to question. I want to stand in awe and wonder of something I can’t explain. I want to truly listen to your story and experience. I want to be open to exploring and finding new things.
But, I can be certain of how I feel in an experience. Since that day, I have become more reflective and open to possibility. Now, I never know what I will find. It might be nothing. Or, I might discover a presence that says, peace be with you.
Peace,
Teresa