Every mile a memory...

Four hundred eighty miles behind me, and less than three hundred to go...  My body is wiped out, but my head is racing.  So many thoughts going through my brain and I don't know where to just relax and allow sleep to take over.  

Got a pretty late start today.  Woke up around 9 am and putzed around.  Mommy tried to convince me that I should wait another day and leave really early Tuesday morning, but I told her that there was no way I'd be able to make the entire drive in a day.  I think she just wanted me to stay with her for a few more hours.  Around eleven, I announced that I should probably get going.  I packed the remaining bags in my car and shut the hatch.  Mommy and Hannah-Leigh were both standing beside my car with frozen smiles.  "Well, here I go," I said, suddenly nervous as tears battled with my eyelids.  That started the flood.  

"This is what you've always dreamed of doing," Mommy whispered through her own deluge.  I embraced her and wished she wouldn't cry.  When I pulled away, I saw tears escaping down my sister's eyes, too.  Seeing them both cry was hard, and I couldn't bear looking at them.  Tears drenched my face as I drove down the driveway.  The were still standing there watching me when I rounded the curve out the drive.  

The lyrics of a Patty Griffin song rang though my head, "Oh, off you go into the summer..."  it is a song about soldier going off to war, but the lyrics ring of a mother's pride and sadness at seeing her child leave.  

So, tomorrow I step into a new chapter of my life...  tonight the page will turn and the Great Author of my life will continue on with this adventure.  If you had told me a year ago that I would be leaving home like this, locking all my possessions in storage, and setting off to destinations unknown, I would have probably laughed with both excitement and disbelief.  But here I am.  Two hundred-something miles away from triumph or disaster.  I pray that I am least moderately successful.  I feel like I'm living that scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indy is in the cave searching for the Holy Grail and he has to endure three tests.  One test is the "Step of Faith" where he must seemingly step out into thin air.  Essentially, this is what I feel I am doing...  

So, with eyes closed and heart open, I am extending my shaking foot.  Tomorrow morning I will step down.  What will I find?  Thin air or terra firma?