Choosing Courage: Lessons from the Lone Star State

Journeying toward courage. 

   

***

The choice between fear or courage arrives at sunset in Marathon, Texas. I stand barefoot on the tile floor and look at the map unfolded across the hotel’s desk. I follow her turquoise bejeweled finger as she traces the next part of our journey – the hundreds of miles stretching to the border.

Seeing the miles, the cities, the sprawling distance, I feel the sudden weight of my decision to go to this conference on human trafficking in McAllen, Texas.

She senses my hesitation. My childhood friend knows that my tendency is to second-guess and fall into self-doubt.

“You decide,” she tells me. She’s granting me the space to decide to go or stay.

I am desperate for her fearlessness, her courageous openness and confidence in self to handle whatever arises along the way. I crave freedom from this fear threatening to sabotage my bold decision to travel to the border for a conference.

I think back to the email that ignited the spark to travel to Texas. I receive the email about the conference on human trafficking on the border from my former professor.

“This may be of interest to you,” he writes.  He’s my undergraduate research mentor who supported my academic pursuits in researching human trafficking in Kentucky. The whole process of writing the paper – interviewing advocates & researchers, reading articles and gathering notes, writing the paper and presenting the research at a national conference - is one of the happiest experiences of my life. 

I am aligned to purpose when I write to illuminate human rights issues. There’s a part of me that feels ecstatically alive when I research – I listen with my entire being to people’s stories, showing up as a witness, gathering information, seeking connections, and I carry these stories with me.

The conference is an opportunity to hear stories from the border from advocates, academics and survivors. The border is a world I do not know, and I am pulled to seeing and experiencing this world of blending cultures.

I believe this is a sign from the Universe. The timing is ideal. My best friend from childhood and I are already musing on an Austin and Marfa adventure. The conference serendipitously fits into our plans. We’ll just swing south after rocking out in Austin, romping through Marfa and roaming through Big Bend.

Now on the eve before we embark deep south into the Lone Star state and staring at the map, I realize this casual driving swing is a ten-plus-hour drive, and looming through the journey will be anxiety about the conference itself. Disconnected from my passionate initial response, I teeter toward the familiar hold of fear. The fear calculates the risk of traveling all those miles in a single day. The fear voices the concerns about feeling out-of-place at the conference. There is the tempting alternative to stay here and spend the next few days adventuring through West Texas.

The fear is deeper than the practical concerns of traveling safely or the  nervous butterflies about showing up solo to a conference – this is the fear of change. Instinctively, I know this journey will change me, and I fear how the experiences will shape me. My perspective will be shifted by the speakers at the conference, by the world I will see through the car windows (glimpses of Mexico), through the air I will breathe, heavy with the stories from the border.

As the sun sets, as the tiny Texas town turns inward, I make the decision to go, and I am ecstatic and petrified. My love affair with courage begins here. 

The traveled map to McAllen is etched into the inner terrain of my heart, and I revisit those last few days in Texas often in gently held memories. I slip back into the auditorium at the conference and feel the spark of aliveness awakening me to the world beyond the border. I remember deeply listening, a full focus that engaged my whole self. This unwavering attentiveness is a sign that I am where I need to be, I am immersed in the life flow, and this electric concentration happens when I am effortlessly doing what I love.

The feeling is the memento. I cling to this feeling when life currents get rough, when I feel distant from myself, and when an unknown sadness settles and quietly rivers through the motions of my daily life.

The lingering feeling of Texas in my being propels me to return. I am running away, but I am running back to source. I do not recognize the person I am anymore – a whirling dervish of reactions, susceptible to blinding anger and a dulling sadness. I book a solo ticket because I ache for an adventure, a challenge, a remembering of the strength of my nature.

Then, the fear arrives a few weeks before my trip. The fear wakes me in the middle of the night. I am wild with concerns. I consider cancelling the trip.

I slow the breath. There’s a recalling of another memory, of when fear emerged in charged panic. I land back in Marathon. I see the map spilled out across the desk, and feel the same lurch of the heart, the quickening of the breath. Fear. A fear I am beginning to understand: the fear signaling a change. The fear of the unknown. Beneath the fear, is the terrifying thrill of standing on the edge of a new adventure. The thrill of an adventure about to begin, an end launching into a beginning, and the deepening of an innate courage to go.

And go I do.