Betty Karr

"I carried a “glow of being loved ”from the Deepening Circle in California with me all the way to Chicago, where I arrived on Monday at 4pm.  I found I had a 4-hour delay due to the bad weather, but managed to get to Louisville by 10:30pm.  I was feeling so happy to know there was just one more hour ahead of me to reach home.  I took off from the airport with a song in my heart... Which soon turned to a moan... As I realized all the roads were slick with black ice.  I was driving our old 5 speed shift pickup truck which is a 4x4 (no help on ice).  There is just one bridge available for me to cross from Kentucky to Indiana.  As I approached that bridge from the east, there was a 5 car pile up and several miles of traffic.  I thought I was really brilliant to turn quickly enough to go down an off ramp, drive several miles and turn around, to approach the bridge from the west.

I drove back on the freeway to the bridge approaching it from the west, thinking how smart I was when all of a sudden I had to make a quick stop to avoid piling into a stopped line of traffic backed up for 3-4 miles.  Nothing moved.  We had to sit there for over THREE HOURS before the bridge was cleared of another accident.  It seemed quite the coincidence that both approaches to the bridge had multiple car crashes at almost the same time.  It was cold and snowing and we had to turn off the truck engine because we were running out of gas   As I sat in the icy cold truck for those three hours, I remembered what she said in circle about previously feeling homeless and unloved until she made the circle commitment and found her real family.   Remembering how she described her life making a radical shift due to having a new support system, kept me feeling warm and fuzzy inside.  I realized how that had actually happened for me also. Having just left the circle of 15 beautiful, kind and loving women, I continued to feel their love and caring while sitting for those three hours in stalled traffic.  It was memories of our weekend filled with laughter, play, love, nourishment and sharing that kept my attention off my semi-frozen toes as well as keeping my mood positive. .  That, plus half of a wonderful tuna fish sandwich Momma Jean had made for me early Monday morning to take on the plane.   At 2am they began letting traffic cross the bridge.  I crept home over icy roads and finally arrived at 3am, all in one piece….and running on gas fumes,   Feeling the love in my heart guided me safely home driving the last 40 miles over black ice."