Brave Hearts

After driving through 11 states with 6-7 teenage girls, I have heard one thing over and over. And so have the girls. Inevitably, when people hear what we are up to (and they do, because we are hard to ignore whenever we walk into a place), they turn to me and say the same thing: “You’re brave.”

My fellow travelers and I have discussed this. What does that say to them, that everyone turns to me and says I’m brave? I’m driving around in my van, seeing cool places with some cool people. There is nothing especially brave about that. I love seeing cool places with cool people. Perhaps it took a bit extra courage for me to drive down a mountainside or to enter traffic in L.A., but for the most part, I’m having a great time, aside from being a bit tired from being the sole driver.

I’ve seen a lot of places for the first time—Antelope Canyon, Joshua Tree, Hollywood, Santa Monica Pier, Las Vegas, and the Great Salt Lake, to name a few. For someone as afflicted with wanderlust as I am, this is food for the soul.

And, as I’ve mentioned before, the girls in my van are food for my soul. They make me laugh, they remind me of my youth, they give me hope for the future.

So why does everyone say I’m brave? In our discussion of this question, the girls have suggested it means people think I’m crazy. I probed them on why people might think that. They felt like people would be scared to do it because they can get a little excited or loud.

I’m thinking that the “scared” part is correct. Adults are easily scared by teens, myself included at times. We somehow think they are in this category of “other” humans. They are so close to adulthood, they can have real discussions about deep issues. They are observant and intelligent. They care about the world and the people around them.

But they are also close to childhood, and they know how to have fun. They know how to laugh. Yes, their brains are still developing. They have lapses in judgment, but then so do adults. Just ask the park ranger who gave me, an aging mom, a federal citation for allowing the girls to put their heads out the windows and sunroof to see the stars at Joshua Tree National Park.

At the same time that people think that teens are scary, I’m amazed at how free some people feel to give instruction to teens they’ve never met. For example, yesterday a woman cut in front of them in the breakfast line, loaded her plate with pancakes and syrup, and then warned them to watch their sugar intake. When they giggled nervously, she said “It’s no joke!” and stomped away.

Anyway. Driving this group is a privilege, it is most definitely not an act of bravery. So what is brave?

• Riding the world’s tallest Ferris wheel in Las Vegas when you are afraid of heights. (I won’t disclose which of my passengers fit this category, but kudos to them)
• Continuing on enthusiastically with your friends after random, older men leer at or make uninvited comments to your group. When you are 14 or 15 years old. I’d forgotten what it’s like to be introduced to the way your gender is perceived.
• Fighting wildfires in the excessively dry Southwest
• Stopping a car full of people who are hanging out the windows on a dark night on a dark road (see park ranger story above)
• Serving in Afghanistan, like the Marine of Latino descent with whom I chatted in 29 Palms near Joshua Tree. He’s been in the Marines for 20 years. He told me the Marines use a base in 29 Palms because it is so similar to conditions in Afghanistan. See my description of the Mojave Desert in the previous post. And the Marines overseas don’t get to go back to an air conditioned hotel room.

That’s just a small sampling of brave people overcoming real fears.

A couple of days ago, driving between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, we took a detour to go see the Topaz Museum. In a dry, dusty section of Utah, you can drive by the site of a former WWII Japanese internment camp that was named Topaz. About 15 miles away, in the city of Delta, Utah, you can visit the museum. It officially opened last year, and it is filled with stories and artifacts from that time when, out of fear after Pearl Harbor was bombed, 110,000-120,000 people of Japanese descent on the west coast were ordered out of their homes and businesses, put in camps in the desert, and cut off from society.

I gave the girls this (inadequate) comparison on our way to the museum so that they would know what it was about. I told them it was as if the Netherlands declared war on the U.S., so the U.S. government took all of the people of Dutch descent in Grand Rapids (which is a good portion of my carload) and put them in a camp in the desert.

Americans of Japanese descent were held behind barbed wire by armed guards. Their constitutional rights were violated, let alone their human rights. They lived in dire conditions, vastly different from anything they knew on the west coast. And when the war was over, many had no homes or jobs to go back to.

So here’s an amazing kind of bravery. As Japanese Americans faced the extreme distrust of their fellow American citizens and the government itself, 33,000 of them served in the U.S. military forces during or immediately after World War II. That’s just astonishing to me.

While driving through Nevada we saw signs warning that “Dragging Chains Can Spark A Wildfire.” That’s a real danger in such arid land. It only takes a spark.

Fear is a kind of wildfire. One event can spark fear, igniting hidden issues of race, economics, or perceived scarcity, to name a few. It is up to us to make sure that we are paying close attention to what we carry, inspecting our own chains to make sure we aren’t contributing to destructive forces.

A quote from Maya Angelou hangs in the museum: 

History, despite its wrenching pain, 

Cannot be unlived, but if faced 

With courage, need not be lived again.

More to the point, here are some words from I John 4:16-19:

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.

God’s love can drive out our fears. Then we can love our neighbors fully, whoever and wherever they may be. And perhaps we’ll be privileged to see some amazing things.