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The Other Side of Staying

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Jeep Girl here… I’ve been home from Spain for a little over a month now. It’s been so interesting coming back and seeing how world travel and Barcelona specifically has changed my perspective on the US, on Nashville and on my life in general. It’s made me grateful for so much, and it’s made me realize what a comfortable little bubble we live in as Americans. We are shielded from so much of the reality of the world, and that shield allows us the luxury of dreaming the American Dream. In that respect, I’m so grateful to have been born into this bubble! Dreaming is normal here. The belief that I can be anything I want to be is commonplace.   There is something missing from this ‘dream world’ though.  It doesn’t feel quite as real here as it did to me there in Barcelona, and I find myself reaching for a newspaper to keep me tethered to this new piece of earth. It’s something I hope I can hold on to for the rest of my life.  I’ve seen friends travel the globe,
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Check Please!

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Jeep Girl here… I hadn’t slept more than four hours per night in days, and I was feeling less like a Jeep Girl than ever. I laid on the couch in front of a fan trying to cool down long enough to take a nap, but it didn’t happen. My mind spiraled to a bad place. I’m not good at being alone. Not for long periods of time anyway. As I’ve gotten older I have come to appreciate personal space, and I definitely need time to myself to feel healthy emotionally, but a day or two of that every week is more than enough for me. The last week, all the friends I have made here are attending a special intensive on the theology of the Holy Spirit. It is about an hour out of the city, so they all leave very early and get home very late. The Pastors are on vacation. So I’m left having a lot of time to think, and the lack of sleep means that my emotions aren’t working well.  Then I got a call from some of my best friends back home. I had mentioned my insomnia previously, and they w
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Lost and Found

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Jeep Girl here… It’s true. Not all who wander are lost, but I am. Very very lost. I am about to give you a long list of reasons why I’m lost, but make no mistake if those reasons didn’t exist, I would still be lost. That is because I was born without that very important standard issue device called a sense of direction. You don’t even have to spin me around 3 times to make me lose track of where we are. Just simply engage me in conversation, put me on a beautiful tree-lined street or for that matter an ugly street. I will ultimately be distracted and lose all sense of time, space, and distance. I won’t remember landmarks, or if I do they will be random ones that no one else remembers.  Let’s say I get lost and I phone a friend for help. When they ask me to tell them what I see around me, I say things like, “there’s a redbird in the tree, a bubblegum wrapper that someone folded into a funny shape on the sidewalk, and a woman drying her hair in the 5th story window.
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Gracias Jesus

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Jeep Girl here... After a delicious tapas meal with the Carranos and all of my traveling companions, it was time to say goodbye to Penny and the gang. I noticed that the Carranos had arrived on foot and wondered where the car was, but I was sure it would appear when it was time to go. Alas, it did not. They fully intended on walking me and my month's worth (or 5) of luggage 20 mins away to my apartment! I realize I sound a lot more like a spoiled little American Princess right now than an adventure seeking Jeepgirl, but I am Jeepgirl not Walkinggirl. (Or something more clever that I'll come up with later while I'm laying in bed tonight) Apparently, no one has cars here because the parking is so hard to find. So, when they say something is close, that could mean you will be walking for 25 mins in 90 degree heat carrying a bag that weighs more than 50 pounds and is missing 2 of it's wheels! I did NOT like those numbers, so I said a desperate prayer and by so
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