Once the rain had finally subsided, I tried to perk myself up by taking my dog for a walk. Even though I felt depressed and tear-eyed, I hoped that getting out of the house would help. Instead, it just made things worse. At the end of my walk, a strapping black wolf-dog made a charge straight for my little dachshund. Poor Coco was scared to death. All I could do was quickly pick her up to avoid the frenzied dog who was rapidly approaching.
After some yelling from me and barking from Coco, the intruder retreated. Phew. Moments later, a man in a white car slowed down beside us and started yelling at me for walking my dog in the road. Living in a rural area, where there are no sidewalks, there's no other option. When I began explaining this, he then went on to chastise me and my dog for egging the big dog on. This man was amazingly rude and his comments truly made my blood boil. Once he started swearing at me, I turned my back on him and retreated to the safety of my kitchen. My day had gone from rotten to down right crappy.
The next day brought sunshine (thank goodness) and an incredibly uplifting phone call with my dear friend Sue. She patiently let me vent and commiserated with me. I've been feeling down about being 51 years old with no goals and no passions in my life. Every day has begun to feel like a repeat of the day before. While I have lots on my plate to keep me busy, I have been feeling for a long while that I need a big dream in my vision. A dream so big that it's almost scary.
As Sue and I continued to talk, she helped me uncover a dream that had recently been nipping at my heels. It's the dream to go to Israel. Recently, I have had several "God Winks" nudging me to get there and so it's been raised to the top of my "bucket list". This past weekend, I even began to talk out loud about how I could we could make this happen without spending a small fortune. I had always thought that a trip to Israel would/should be a family adventure. However, with four of us to factor into the equation, the idea of ever taking such a trip seemed well beyond our reach.
As Sue and I continued to explore the possibility of that dream becoming a reality... I began to see that perhaps this was a dream to pursue on my own. While it might be impossible for all four of us to go to Israel, maybe it was possible for one of us to go. Sue was the one that came up with the idea of 1000 days. Quite simply, she said "Almost anything is possible in a thousand days."
So here I am, thinking that impossible may actually now be possible. I like the idea of having 1000 days to plan this trip because I think it may take me that long to figure it all out. Plus, as a mother of two teenagers, I wanted to make sure that my travel plans wouldn't be a hardship for my kids. Two and a half years from now, they will both be old enough for me to be gone for an extended amount of time.
I guess I need to explain how I came up with the goal of visiting Israel for 100 days - which my eldest son already thinks is way too long. To figure out the departure date, I grabbed a calendar and calculated the date of --- Tuesday, December 23, 2014. What's really exciting is that I will actually arrive in Israel in time to celebrate the last night of Chanukah.
The only question left was when would I return? I already knew that I would want to be gone for several weeks. I already knew that a dream this big was going to require more than the standard ten day excursion. My first thought was to see if I could stay long enough to celebrate Passover in Israel. Since it is a Jewish tradition to close out every Passover Seder with the phrase "Next Year in Jerusalem", I got very excited that next year (Passover 2013) I might utter those words and really mean them. So, back to the calendar I went. According to my calculations, if I arrive in Israel on December 24, 2014 and stay for exactly 100 days my return date would be Saturday, April 4, 2015. Since Passover starts the night before, this means I will be in Jerusalem for that Seder after all.
Since I don't really believe in coincidences, I feel that somehow this whole event is just "meant to be". In retrospect, I am even beginning to wonder if the obnoxious man in the white car (who I'd never seen before) was actually an angel in disguise? Of course, I don't know what it says about me to have a "guardian angel" that yells and swears. But then again, whatever works... works.
