On My First Trip to Israel

“One never reaches home,' she said. 'But where paths that have an affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time.”
― Hermann Hesse

          This past week I had a rare and wonderful opportunity to travel with my best friend across the world for the first time.  Jess and I have traveled many times through the years and our traveling pace always fits perfectly together, but we have never embarked on an international voyage before.  And to Israel of all places.  I have many dream locations marked out on my internal travel list, but Israel has never been high on that list. 

          I suppose it's the Dave Ramsey Effect more than anything that made me shy away from planning a trip there.  Have you never heard of the Dave Ramsey Effect?!  Well, that's because it's something very real that possibly only effects myself and a rare handful of other people in the world.  Let me try to explain it in a nutshell.  I hate Dave Ramsey or at least I used to think I hated him, after much time and self reflection I came to realize I not only don't hate anything Dave Ramsey has to say..I actually agree with him most of the time.  What I truly hate is how people who listen to Dave Ramsey tend to start behaving after listening to him. (As if he is the only financial guru who has any answers and if you don't follow everything he has to say to the letter then you are either a financial louse or a fool.  As if he is the financial messiah come to save us all from debt and any variation from what he says is bordering on a sin.) So...because I hate how some people behave when they listen to Dave Ramsey I automatically hate Dave Ramsey.  I think the same happened with Israel for me.  Because so many people treat it as if travel there is a high holy experience that cannot be missed, I automatically decided I had no desire to be a part of anything to do with it.  Is that foolish on my part?  Sure, probably.  Is it an effect that happens with many things in my life? You betcha!  Sure fire way for me to automatically not like someone is if everyone tells me they are the most amazing person in the world and I should automatically love them.

          Anyway, I am pretty sure when it comes to traveling to Israel the Dave Ramsey Effect took control and I just randomly decided it had nothing important to offer me.  I was satisfied with that and was busy planning my next trip to China, Peru, Nepal or Norway when Jess contacted me and let me know she was planning to go to Israel.  I told her I was excited for her, but my money was going other places so I could not go with.  She was going for a family genealogy type event anyway and I didn't want to stick my nose where it had no business being.

           Periodically I would get updates about the trip plans, and I truly felt excited for the opportunity she had to go and meet long lost family members and learn more about her family history but I was still not willing to use my saved up trip money for Israel.  Then one weekend about five weeks before her travel date I was playing online and found a flight.  It was the same dates as my best friend's trip and it was a third less in price than any flight to Israel that I had ever seen.  It was within my vacation savings budget.  I messaged her and double checked the dates...sure enough I had remembered correctly.  My heart leapt and all at once I felt the desire to go.  The problem was I had already put in my time off requests and to ask my boss to switch my time at the last minute was certainly a risk.  I asked my friend and a couple of family members to pray about it and I asked that if this trip would be important for me to go on for some reason that I could not see, I would be able to get the time off with no problem and the price of the ticket would not change before I could secure the time off.

          That following Monday I went in to speak with my boss.  Before I could even finish my request she stopped me and said, "This is a once in a lifetime chance.  You have to go.  What days do you need."  I was blown away, but was made dumbfounded when I checked online to find that the flight was the exact same price to the penny as it had been two days before.  I bought the ticket and messaged Jess, I was going with her to Israel.

          The morning that I left on this whirlwind of an adventure I took my nieces out to breakfast and as we drove home from the restaurant one of them said to me, " I want you to tell me what you feel like the moment you step off of the plane and are in Israel.  I have heard you immediately feel like you are home."  I told her I would, but internally I snickered a bit.  Israel is cool I am sure...but it's just another country, it is not magical and there are no unicorns there.  

          The trip from Phoenix, Arizona to Tel Aviv, Israel is in one word...brutal.  After arriving, meeting up with Jess (who flew from her home in another state), doing the paperwork for our rental car, getting cash out of an ATM, finding our rental car and figuring out how to turn it on (All cars in Israel have a four digit code you must enter to turn them on.  The lady at the rental desk did not explain this but that is a hilarious story for another time.) and navigating out of the airport; when I finally remembered my niece's request my only answer was exhausted.  I felt completely and utterly exhausted and absolutely nothing else.  It took me a full 24hours to realize how I felt being there.  And the moment it sunk in hit me harder than I was expecting.

          It was our first full evening in Tel Aviv and I had located the closest cafe to our building.  We had a bit of time free before meeting our group for dinner and I decided it was time for a quick cup of coffee.  The cafe was only three blocks from us so even though it was already dark out I decided to head down alone.  As I was walking back toward our place with my amazing Turkish coffee in hand I was overwhelmed by the realization that I was perfectly 100% at peace.  This may not seem like much to you, but if you are or know of someone who is in law enforcement you will recognize how huge this fact is.  I was walking the streets of a large metropolis after dark and alone...in perfect peace.  

          You see, since 2005 when I began my police training there is always a part of my brain that is on overdrive watching everything for any signs of trouble.  The only time I am 100% at peace is when I am locked in my home sound asleep and my dog is peacefully breathing, and even then sometimes a strange sound will wake me and my body will flood immediately with adrenaline until I can figure out what the sound was.  This feeling of internal silence was so forgotten it was almost unrecognizable.  I was still watching everyone passing by, still listening to the sounds all around me...but I was not on the alert.  I was perfectly at peace.  The last time I remember that feeling was walking to the local market in Danli with my mother when I was about 12 years old.  I cannot explain it, I do not know why or how.  I only know that the entire time I was in Israel I felt perfect peace.  When we were driving and lost, when we were walking through a crowded market and I was tired and grouchy and hot, when I was running alone through paths of a national park...I felt perfectly peaceful without fail. 

          I know you would love for me to tell you the details of what I saw, where we went and what we did on our whirlwind four day trip.  I am sorry but this is not that post.  Perhaps you would like for me to tell you of all the holy sites we went to and some magical spiritual awakening I had while there.  That is not my story and we visited none of the holy sites while we were there.  We did visit the Western Wall which was really cool and I may write about at some point, but today I don't even want to talk about that.  

          Today I want to tell you to take chances and travel to the place you thought you didn't want to go to.  Embrace the experience even if people tell you 'it's not safe' or 'are you sure you want to do that?'.  Don't just travel from landmark to landmark thinking you will come away knowing anything about where you have been.  Immerse yourself into that place and truly soak it in.  Find out where the locals eat and get into conversation with them.  Ask them what they love about where they live and what you should not miss.  Be brave enough to drive and/or take local transportation or even just walk around.  Maybe the magic held in a place is not in going to the sites it is famous for, but just in being willing to go there and see what it has to offer.  Maybe the most amazing experience you will find in a new place will be in realizing that for all of it's vast differences...it somehow fits as if it is a previously unknown missing piece of you.  That in the journey of going there you have found the the peace of home.