June 8th (Katie)

Before I knew it, we were in Arizona. The air grew thick, and we were pulling into an obscure gas station. Desert on either side, I concluded that I didn’t really care for Arizona. We ate at Sonic… and I was still feeling removed from everything, holding onto the thought that I might have cheated them out of a fully functioning team member. As we were climbing into the RV, Cecily pulled up alongside in her 1985 Porche convertible.
“Does anyone want to go with me?” My inferiority complex kicked in with a vengeance, causing me to question: “Do you want someone with you? I mean… you don’t want to be alone?”
“Get in,” she said, motioning to me.
The hot leather seat kissed my bare legs as I sat down. And we were off down the interstate. We talked about everything: relationships, spirituality, our history, family… and somewhere in between stopping for sunscreen and pulling off in Flagstaff to get our coffee fix, I realized that I am right where I need to be. We talked about these blogs, and I inquired as to how honest I should be.
“Totally honest,” she said, the scarf tied around her head dancing in the wind. “Tell us exactly how you are feeling. Overwhelmed, overqualified, angry, excited…if you feel like you’re gifts are not being used… say it. If you’re afraid, tell us.” I looked at her, with her light green sunglasses and nose ring, and then to the painted desert we were ripping through. She told me Africa will be the kind of trip that changed you when your back is turned. I won’t recognize myself when I return. I told her that that was what I was hoping for.
“Don’t you wish you could have seen a glimpse of what you’re seeing now when you were younger?” she asked.
“I wish that all the time,” I replied, sticking my arm out the window and rolling my wrist in the breeze.
In my mind, I was silently opening the door to the bedroom I had when I was seventeen. The room had a blue hue, cast from the dangling fairy-tale lights I put above my bed. My walls were covered in pictures I cut out of National Geographic, images of far-away places I was going to go see when I was finally free enough to do so. Those years were a perfect blend of hopefulness and naïveté, believing everything would open up if I could just be the one that could survive the despair that I saw overcoming people of “maturity”. That despair eventually settled…but in that moment I wished I could give myself at seventeen that feeling to hold on to, like a prayer rock some people keep in their pockets… something solid: the feeling of flying down the road with my hands over my head, head back, talking in the image of oreo-filling clouds over a hot, deep blue sky. Pure, hopeful, seventeen year-old Katie would have loved Cecily’s car.
Last night, we made the push from Arizona to New Mexico. I climbed in the front seat, curling my feet under me as Tom took the wheel. It was quiet at first, as we tried to figure out how to get some music going… but alas, we couldn’t get the speakers working. We let some Lord of the Rings Soundtrack drip from my speakers with a pathetic amount of force before essentially giving up. I don’t know how it came up, but eventually we got to talking about the internship.
It was quiet, but only for a moment.
Then Tom broke the silence.
“When do you feel like you were closest to God?”
I looked at him, startled. He was serious.
I told him about Nicaragua in 2005… the time in my life I felt like I was totally in sync with God. He asked how I knew that I was close to God… what were the signs?

I stopped for a moment. “No fear,” I said.
We talked for another hour or so; enough time to make me realize that Tom is a science minded person, and an amazing one at that… and science helped him come to find God. Science has always tripped me up when it came to my faith. I actually started tearing up a bit as I looked out at the sky and smiled to myself. God put me in an RV with someone who was not afraid of the same things I am, someone who embraces that which confuses me. It’s always a trip, seeing the pieces come together.