UPDATE: My blogs on Santa Fe has now turned into a 3-Parter. Spoiler alert: still had pretty rough going in Part 2 but I can promise you that Part 3 is happy and fun. Stay tuned! 

When last we left things in Part 1, I was curled up on the floor in a foam donut, inside a freezing yurt, bruised and sniveling.

I got up the next morning (actually I just gave up trying to sleep), packed my things, and braved Mt. Compost for the final time. But before I left, I wanted to at least see the llamas. Having arrived the night before in pitch black -my host and his wife have a large property outside Santa Fe in the country – I wasn’t sure where the llamas were. After getting Bluebell all packed up, I rounded the yurt – because, well, it’s round – and there they were, the llamas! And they were all staring at me. By the time I got my phone out to take such a “posed” picture, a few had gone back to eating or grooming themselves. As I walked up to the fence, a few came to meet/smell me, and as I walked along the fence of their pen, most of them feigned some interest and then ignored me. But I kid you not, the minute I turned my back on any seemingly uninterested llama, they would stare at me. How do I know? Because I would walk past an ignoring llama, wait a second, then turn back to look, and they would be neck straight up, staring at me! I did this more than once, even sneaking a selfie as proof. It was hilarious.

I finally bid the silly llamas good-bye, let my hosts know I was leaving, and set off for downtown Santa Fe to my new accommodations. My next host met me around 11am to show me the place and it was adorable, with beautiful art on the walls, and furnished impeccably. My host bid me well, left, and having gotten no sleep in the yurt, I went to the kitchen to make some much-needed coffee. That’s when I discovered that every appliance in the kitchen was a high-end, German-made, Gagganeau installation and extremely counterintuitive to use (with no manuals to be found). My attitude started to sour as I got that familiar sinking feeling. But I told myself not to give in to it; I would simply look up the Gagganeau manuals online and go from there. Then the wifi password didn’t work, even after seven times of carefully typing it in. My heart sank some more. I struggled to buck myself up one more time by remembering there was a coffee shop a block away which would have both wifi and coffee! I went to get my laptop, wallet and keys. But there were no keys. My host had not left me the keys to the place so I had no way to lock up the house, the house into which I had just hauled all my precious belongings. At that point, I sank, defeated, into the nearest chair and threw myself an enormous pity party. It went something like this:

“I just want a cup of coffee! Ok?!?! A a cup of coffee and a NORMAL POTTY!  No, a cup of coffee, a REAL BED, and normal potty. No wait, a cup of coffee, a real bed, a WORKING HEATER, and a normal potty! Is that too much to ask!?! Is this not the First World!?!?!?!??!!?”

Yeah… so… when that was over, I texted my host about the forgotten key and she came immediately back. Not only that, she brought me a cup of hot coffee, and then she and I spent the next hour or so making calls to internet and cable providers to solve the wifi problem (I didn’t even attempt to have her teach me how to use the appliances). By the time the wifi was up, the keys in my hand, and my very apologetic host gone, it was about 3pm, All I wanted was a hot shower and a long nap.

After my shower, I got in my pjs, plopped on the couch, and channel surfed for a movie. But I barely had the TV on when this wave of homesickness hit me and I started to cry… again. But I’m not talking like the previous night’s “I’m-in-a-yurt-with-a-crazy-toilet-and-no-heat” kind of whimpering. I mean full-on, tears streaming down my face and neck, ugly crying. After which I got very disappointed with myself. I mean, c’mon, I’ve been away from home for more than 3 weeks before. I’m no longer that 6th grader who cried herself to sleep every night at Outdoor Ed Camp. I spent 4 years across the country in college, coming home only at Christmas and summers! I was an exchange student in Argentina, for pete’s sake, and that required a different language and a different hemisphere! And through all these endeavors, I don’t ever remember getting homesick to the point of crying. And yet barely three weeks into my big girl road trip, I was crying! I missed my dog, missed my home on Lake Street, missed my friends/coworkers, but then realized that even if I were to turn the MINI around and head home, my life as I knew it, the one I felt homesick for, no longer existed! And when that realization hit me, I sank pretty low and didn’t leave my rental for the next two days. Instead I slept, cried, journaled, and – after Googling German appliance manuals – drank many, many espressos.

I won’t go into all the details of this dark night of the soul, but it pretty much went in cycles of this: “I have no home! I have no husband or kids! Nothing I’ve done has made a difference in this world! What the bleep am I doing out here on this road trip anyway!?” Wash, rinse, repeat.  Yeah, I was quite over the top. But I am a deep feeler (a.k.a. drama queen) and I did have some of that “hormonal assistance” we women get every month that contributed to the drama. But God and I managed to pull myself out of my funk by the end of the second day, as I was reminded of a line of dialogue from a TV movie I had watched recently.

The movie was called “Flight of the Phoenix,” and it was about a plane that crash-landed in the Gobi desert. The captain wanted the survivors to sit tight and wait for rescue as the best way to conserve the water they had. But after several days with no rescue and the deaths of a few who tried to walk out, some of the survivors advocated trying to rebuild the plane. The captain was completely against it. One of the guys privately asked the captain why he wouldn’t let them at least try. The captain replied, “Because I know it won’t fly.” The guy said it didn’t matter. He continued,

All people need in life is something to love.
If you can’t give them that, then give them something to hope for.
If you can’t give them that, then give them something to do.

When I was deep in my funk the second day, this kept coming to mind and heart. I felt like I was wrestling with God to really think about this. So I assessed that I didn’t have anyone “to love” (I was single and even away from my dog) and I didn’t have anything “to do” (no job contributing to or serving mankind) and it started to feel like I was adding insult to injury. But then I heard a still small voice ask me, “What, if anything, Gretchen, are you hoping for?”

When I planned this trip, it wasn’t just supposed to be a trip around the country to see historic places and visit friends. It was also going to be a journey with me and God. It would be a time to rediscover who I was and know my worth away from my job and ministry roles, and also to strengthen my faith to meet the growing challenges culture and the future will put on it. And most importantly, at the end of this gap year/midlife crisis/walkabout, I would hear what the Lord has for me to do and who the Lord has for me to love in the next season of my life. So yeah, I needed to be reminded of the hope at the core of my original plan. And when I was, I made peace with the fact that funky, soul-searching days like the ones I’d just had are supposed to be part of it.

So the answer is yes, there are things I am hoping for: hope that I will rediscover my worth, I will stretch my faith, and I will hear from the Lord about what’s next for me. So I guess a person doesn’t need something to love or something to do if they have something to hope for. Because “we have this hope as an anchor for the soul” (Hebrews 6:19), and hope leads to everything else.

Be of good courage and He shall strengthen your heart,
all you who hope in the Lord. – Psalm 31:24

NEXT UP: Part 3, where I actually get to see Santa Fe!