I grew up on a farm in a farming community. The biggest road hazards we ever faced, other than heavy snow, were tractors. Our county seat was smaller than Wabash. Where we took our corn and soybeans was the county seat of the next county over to the east, and it was even smaller than our own county seat. The county to the south had a pretty little village in it with a village square. That was also a county seat and it was tiny. Cleveland was sixty miles to the west, but it might have been on the moon as far as I was concerned. Our little sliver of the world was quiet and laid back. When we went hunting it was often on Amish land, and they went with us. It was a great place to grow up.

          You would think that growing up in such an environment would make me leery of big city driving. Not so. Early on, I found I could look at a map and memorize it. While I would be driving in a city, and while Marsha would be praying, I would pick out landmarks and not forget them ever. As time went on and Marsha realized she didn’t have to pray when I was driving, I would write the directions down ahead of time and Marsha would read them as we went along. Marsha became the navigator. The two biggest challenges we have ever faced were Chicago and Washington D.C. But even those two places were challenging only the first time through. After that, it wasn’t bad. Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Savannah, Charleston (both West Virginia and South Carolina), Knoxville, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Fort Meyers, Orlando, Pensacola, Birmingham, Mobile, Baton Rouge, Biloxi, Galveston, Houston, Little Rock, Memphis, Frankfort, Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, St. Louis, Kansas City and a host of smaller cities; not a problem.

          So, what is it about Indianapolis?

          Why is it that whenever I find out I am going to have to go to Indianapolis, my blood runs cold? There are the traffic circles, of course. No other place in the civilized world has so many and are so confusing. The first one I ever actually saw was in Carmel, just outside of Indy, and I decided right then that it was the stupidest idea for traffic control ever. Nothing has changed in the last two and a half years to make me change my mind. But it really isn’t the circles. The highway system around the city is no more confusing that anywhere else, the surface roads are pretty much sane, except for the traffic circles. (I am convinced I will get caught on a circle and never be able to get off, eventually running out of gas and getting run over by a semi. That is how I will die.) Traffic can be hectic at rush hour, but traffic is worse at midnight in D.C. I don’t know what it is about the city. I get past Kokomo and I start to get stupid.

          As my mother got older I would bring her into Indianapolis to see her mother and two of her sisters. We would get there, I would eat lunch with everyone and then I would head back to Ohio, returning when my mother was ready. A six hour trip that took us through Cleveland and Columbus and Dayton into Indy. Never a problem. But we only came into Indianapolis a very short way on the east side of town. I was on the east side of town this past Wednesday and drove around a bit, seeing the places I hadn’t seen for years. But getting there was traumatic.

          Kenzie was going to have knee surgery. I had to leave early. Marsha decided to go with me because she knows how I am. It was a good thing she was along. I would still be on the bypass. The hospital was two miles from where my cousin lives on the east side of town. My cousin’s daughter is getting married and I am doing the wedding, so we arranged to meet and make final plans. Getting to Wanamaker (the neighborhood in which my cousin lives) was easy, but getting to the hospital to begin with was really, really hard. Why?

          It is some kind of block in my brain. Last month we were in Cleveland. Nothing to it. The highway system in Indianapolis is no more complicated than the highway system in Cleveland, but I just cannot deal with it easily. The wedding is going to be this coming Saturday downtown. Rehearsal is Wednesday night and the wedding is Saturday, which means I am driving downtown Indianapolis twice in one week. I first met the bride to be (Melissa, or Missy for short) twenty eight years ago when she was placed in my arms by her mother, Betty. Betty explained to me how to hold a baby and fussed over her, but Missy looked up at me and smiled. How could I ever tell that girl that I can’t do her wedding because I am terrified?

           I was going through some old notes a while back and I came across a ‘Christian’ school that had once attracted my attention. This school listed fourteen things you had to do to go to heaven. Fourteen things. That would be hopeless. That is the way I feel driving in Indianapolis. Hopeless.

          Thankfully, there is hope. Not for Indianapolis. That is hopeless for me. But there is hope for salvation. Simply believing that Jesus died for our sins, was buried in a borrowed tomb and was risen again to give us eternal life is all that is needed. Different Christians have differences in thought as far as how we worship and what rituals we observe, but so long as we agree on that one issue, faith in the redeeming power of Christ, we are brothers and sisters in Christ.

          When I think about going in to Indy this week, it helps give me a little more backbone to think that Missy isn’t just my second cousin. She is my sister in Christ.