Flagging Resistance

Tuesday, October 10 ~ Warren, Michigan

I was in Brookfield, Wisconsin last week, enjoying the last of autumn's warmth on a morning walk. As I looked ahead to a break in the trees, a Canadian flag fluttered in an evergreen frame.

Oh, I thought, maybe I will go to Canada when I'm done in Detroit next week.

See, I'd been wondering for weeks in which direction to point my Mercury Monterey when my final scheduled event was done on October 12. Canada -- where I lived until nine years ago when another vehicle pulled me south, into the United States -- had been an on-again, off-again option for some time.

Yesterday, feeling the power of a visit to land of my birth, I finally decided to do it.

And then I realized something. The Canadian insurance card I had requested weeks ago had never turned up. Driving in Canada without it was a risk I wasn't prepared to take.

So I called my insurer, explained the situation and asked if they would overnight one to me at their expense, given that it had been their error.

"Of course we'll overnight it," the customer service rep said. "But we won't pay for it."

I argued, whined and bitched, but to no avail. So I let it go. Not meant to be, I figured.

Sunday night, feeling as though something within me had shifted, I decided to give it another go.

This time, I explained the situation and asked the rep to mail the card to me at my Detroit hotel, gambling that it would arrive in time.

"Wait a minute," he said.

A long minute later he returned. "Give me your address. We'll overnight it to you."

This morning it arrived...at the insurance company's expense.

We're not always conscious of the resistance we carry. Nor are we always conscious when it lifts.

Somewhere in that 24-hour period, something shifted. Somewhere in that 24-hour period, I shifted, and the resistance I couldn't see dissolved.

Friday or Saturday I'll cross the U.S.-Canada border for the first time in nine years. It will be a journey across not an old border, but a new one, as I re-experience both who I was from the perspective of who I am now, and who I am now from the perspective of who I was.

I'm guessing it will be quite the trip!

There's more about this upcoming visit in my latest newsletter, The Currency of Faith