What have I learned from my worst travel mistake?

Homily

2nd Sunday of Lent

8 December 2024

St. Ann Catholic Parish - Prairie Village

AMDG

What did I learn from my worst travel mistake?  My Christmas may depend on my answer.

I have too many mistakes to count.  I'm a terrible traveler.  I arrive at the airport usually just 30 minutes before my flight.  I run my tank on empty a lot of the time, and yes I do occasionally run out of gas.  Everyone wishes me a safe trip, but I'm never as careful as I need to be.  I drive all night sometimes just so I can maximize my time.  I need to tip my guardian angels big time!

Yet two mistakes trump the rest.  I've been caught in blizzards twice.  The first one was before smartphones, in 2001.  When I left Hoxie for Colorado Springs, the sky was blue.  When I got to Goodland, Kansas the Interstate was closed, but I had no idea why.  I hadn't listened to any forecast.  I though maybe it was just a detour and took a country road until I could get back on the interstate.  

Before I hit Limon, I was in big trouble.  My life was perhaps saved by a truck that jackknifed in front of me, blocking the interstate.  I had to stop, which was good for my two-wheel drive car.  Thankfully I had a cell signal so I could stay in touch with my dad by phone, and enough gas to idle the car every once in awhile so I could stay warm.  I sat on the interstate for 8 hours until the blizzard passed and the road cleared. making a 3.5 hour trip in 14 hours.  

Why I was going to Colorado Springs that day is another story, and one that you'll have to try to get out of me by persuasion.  Suffice it to say it was a trip motivated by pride that made me rash and blind!

I didn't learn my lesson from that blizzard though.  In early 2020 I took an epic trip through Phoenix, Vegas, Zion, Salt Lake, Palm Desert, San Diego, LA, Sequoia, Yosemite and Napa Valley in my two-wheel drive Ford Fusion.  All was well until I needed to pass through the Sierra Nevadas and Tahoe on my final way home.  An atmospheric river was heading east but I thought I would be ahead of it.  Stuck for hours in traffic while dropping a friend at the Sacramento Airport, the atmospheric river got ahead of me.  I had to drive in torrential rain until I got to Tahoe, where the rain turned to blizzard conditions.  I had been warned I would never make it home on this epic journey in January in a two-wheel drive car, and I was too proud to admit defeat or spend an extra four days or more in Tahoe that I didn't think I had time to give.  So I put myself and others in danger, white-knuckling through the chain law signs until I got on the other side of the blizzard infally.  Again, my pride go the best of me.  I heard later that several people died in avalanches while skiing the massive amount of snow I had just driven through.

Today's Advent scriptures beg us to learn from our travel mistakes.  Please learn better than I have.  Your Advent depends on it.  If you are going to have your best Christmas, there has to be a smooth and level highway to your heart, so the Lord can arrive and find a place to be born there..  You need to improve the travel conditions to your heart, and you can.

The valleys are my sins.  The mountains are my pride.  The rough and windy roads are my stubbornness, my insistence on controlling things my way instead of following 'the way' that Jesus marks out for me.

What have I learned from my worst travel mistake?  My Christmas depends on the answer.

+mj