adventuring

yesterday, my brother and i were driving from houston back to our home in van after a visit with my grandmother and the dentist. after somehow managing the zoo that is houston's highway system and the animals that make up its drivers, we were well on our way to home. about two hours into our four hour drive, we both noticed a strong sulfur smell - the beautiful rotting egg stench that is so unmistakable. as we made our way through the highway interchange and accelerated, the smell disappeared, and we both chalked it up to the construction site we had just passed.

within the next hour or so, the smell had returned a few more times, and we began to suspect that the stench was actually emanating from somewhere in our car. interesting. so we pulled off at a rest area less than an hour from our house, popped the hood, and found our battery spewing steam and some sort of liquid that was turning the black plastic shield around it white. lovely. i'm not much of a mechanic - i'm actually not anything close to resembling a mechanic - but i do know that batteries are not supposed to get so hot that they spew things left and right. it was so bent out of shape, that once we had turned the car off, it was impossible to start it again. it was done, and out in the texas heat of late afternoon, so were we.

we put a quick call into my dad who thankfully was able to run out to us with a new car battery. while we waited for him to arrive, we were approached by all sorts of visitors. men of various ages, occupations, and sizes of beer bellies all offered their help and particular opinion on the cause of our car trouble. "well tha's jus too bad..." was one of my favorites - the man uttering these words of condolence somehow managed to speak around a mouthful of chew, his baseball cap crushed down upon his head. shortly thereafter, he returned to mowing the grass on the property, riding around in his white undershirt and jean overalls.

another favorite was on of the rest area staff who proferred the suggestion that everything could be traced back to the fact that the car was a saturn. "ya always git trouble with them saturns. man i could tell you all sortsa stories 'bout my saturn couple years back." thanks for the advice.

all in all, though, it was only a minor blip in the trip, and we enjoyed the free wi-fi and air conditioning of the rest area information center. i whiled the moments away catching up on email, puzzling crosswords, and searching for new job postings online.

as i was searching the same hospital websites for the umpteenth time, looking for something new i guess, i was thinking about the men, their offers of help, their opinions, their advice. it reminded me of that day, a few weeks ago, when i got a call from my job - there's no money in the budget for hiring right now, can you wait until november? i was in the texas hill country with my extended family. as people started trickling back from the mall and the lazy river and wherever else they had gone for the day, the word went around, and i started hearing all sorts of plans and ideas and thoughts and opinions from aunts and uncles and cousins. incredibly, everyone knew someone at some health center or outpatient clinic or had heard that somebody-or-other was hiring nurses. then came the consternation - nursing is the recession-proof career! but there's a nursing shortage, how can it be that so few hospitals are hiring?

at the time, as i was processing my next steps and adjusting to the fact that the life that had seemd to fall so easily into my lap was now perhaps indefinitely postponed, i didn't exactly welcome these conversations. i thought that if i could just sit down long enough and think hard enough, i could puzzle out my next move - like the crossword puzzles i love. but sometimes with crossword puzzles, you need someone else's eyes, someone else's knowledge and experience.

i am learning that there are definitely times in life when the same principle holds true. i might go so far as to say not even times, but that life itself is better when lived with other people. relationships with family and friends of all ages help define the boundaries and edges of who we are. rene descartes said "i think, therefore i am." i would say, given my recent experiences, "i am loved, therefore i am." not just by a creator god who is continually revealed in new and different ways, but by family, friends, strangers even, who form a fabric of support capable of handling any of life's unexpected bumps and breakdowns along the way.

we'll just have to see where this "way" goes...