Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Let the new journey begin...

My good friend Beccah Ray, gave me this encouragement. She said "I know this isn't what you had planned for your life, but you're an adventurer, and this is your next journey".  That is a true statement, and anybody who knows me knows that I do like to make my own path, preferring to do things my own way.  My brother-in-law always jokes about a time during my teen angst years (which seemed to have followed me well into my 20s) when I responded to him, "well Josh, you know I'm not a conventional girl!" in a huffy, exasperated tone.  Deep down, I love the conventional.  I love houses with gray siding and white trim and porches and a garden.  I love fall traditions of pumpkin carving and apple picking and hay rides and campfires.  I love Christmas songs and movies and cookies; and making New Year's resolutions, and playing card games, and living in a suburban area that is quiet and safe.  I love the idea of family, although my family unit is going to be smaller than the norm.  I love many conventional ideas, but I don't discriminate against the creative, or against lives that are led in different ways.  Life can be lived a million ways, and each person's experience in life is unique, it is one of a kind, it is their own.  Life is as different as our fingerprint - to each their own.

And to me, this is now my life.  I have already felt myself being changed, doing things I previously wouldn't do or think - thinking more about someone else than myself, than my own feelings.  I have a little, tiny, living infant inside my belly, and it is time to think about them already.  I don't overdo my "work outs" because I know that I need to take it easy on myself so that the baby will be safe and sound, undisturbed in the little home they have.  As I am cleaning out the things I have kept over the years (because I am a packrat), I have found many things that are awakening my creative side once again, a side of me I lost many years ago.  A side that appreciates fiction novels, and idealism, and critical thinking about what is around us and presented to us each day.  I want to share one of, possibly my favorite, poem:

A Dream Within a Dream - Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.


I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep-while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

First Precious Moment

Today I had a life-changing moment while at my first appointment at the obstetrician's office.  Yes, you read correctly, I had an appointment with the obstetrician.  I am eleven weeks pregnant, with an "unplanned" child, and thus I have moved home to transition into a life of working as a nurse and becoming a single mother.  I have accepted a job to work in Labor and Delivery at St. Vincent Women's Hospital, which is my dream ideal job at this point in my life.  I will be in a warm, supportive environment, and learn so much in my first nursing job in the USA.  It's not something I, or anybody, expected at this point in my life, but this is the situation, and it cannot be changed.  I am so blessed, lucky, and fortunate to have a family and group of friends who are extremely supportive of me, and who will stand by my side through all of the rapid changes that are to come.  At this time next year, I will have a 5 month old to take care of! But back to the life-changing moment...

Today, at my first doctor's appointment, I was able to listen to the heartbeat of the baby.  That was the precious moment that stole my heart and filled me with such a joy unlike anything I have ever felt before.  To hear the heartbeat, beating so rapidly, so cutely, and know that there is a tiny little two-inch baby thriving inside of my tummy, was an amazing moment not to be forgotten. It affirmed and reaffirmed a million times over my belief that life is an absolute miracle, a gift, a gift which only God can provide. It honestly is an amazing thing.  I can now understand how people ooh and aah over those fuzzy ultrasound pictures that they get of their little babies!  I still will have to wait nearly two more months in order to get my first ultrasound picture, and to find out the gender of the baby. 

I will be updating this continually, documenting the ups and downs, surprises of both pregnancy and parenthood, as well as how to continue my love of Jesus Christ while struggling with the stigma of being a single mother.  I am a firm believer that I do not have to succumb to being a product of my past, but that today and each day forward can be a way of moving forward and growing closer to Christ, to becoming a brighter and brighter light despite a dim or dark past.   Life isn't just perfect, it takes the struggles and the failures to show us the strength of our own character, and to get back up and try again.  To admit our flaws, but not to be defeated by them.  There is nothing that can separate ourselves from God's love, not anything but our own pride, or the Devil whispering to us that God surely can't love us after we have sinned, or that we aren't good enough to be loved.  All that is sillyness, and it is a shame to waste the amazing, infinite love and mercy that Jesus wishes to share with all of us, solely if we do not believe that we are worth it.

All of that and more, coming soon! 

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Bird-eating Plane

I am thankfully safe and sound back home in good old Indiana, but what a trip home it was!  I am not a great traveler; I hate flying, everything about it - from standing in the line to get my boarding pass, to taking my shoes off while going through security, to being overcharged for every food item available, to the crummy food that is served in-flight, to just everything about flying!   So I was not looking forward to my Quito-to-Panama City, Panama City-to-Newark, Newark-to-O'hare  flight schedule....three flights in one day is wayyyy too many. 

My flight to Panama City is on time, we land on time, and I am at my gate. I sneak a little nap in, and am feeling relatively positive about the day, even though it was going to be alot of flights, I was still just so happy to be going home.  We board our flight to Newark on time, and we take off.  I'm noticing how brand-new the plane is, and thinking to myself "Good, we took off okay, I feel safe" right at the same moment we start hearing a "Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!" coming from the left side of the plane, jerking the plane a bit with each noise and emitting a glowing yellow light.  I panic slightly, and start thinking really am I not going to make it home?! This thumping noise continues for about a good minute until the captain shuts down the left engine - we had sucked up a bird into our engine during take off, and I'm not just talking some dinky little pigeon...we had sucked up a huge vulture bird (the airport was constructed near the old land fill of Panama City, which they have now built multi-million dollar homes and condo buildings on top off, thus displacing all the vultures to live in the trees surrounding the airport). 

So, the staff informs us we have been cleared for an emergency landing back in Panama City, where we fly to and land with the one working engine.  We had all the weight of the plane (fuel, passengers, etc) and due to the amount of friction while using the brakes to land, the brakes melted into the wheels and fused them into a locked position.  Thus we could not get towed to the gate, but had to wait for stairs and buses to take us off the runway. After being brought up to a gate where the staff began to give us more information, we had to proceed downstairs, pick up our luggage, proceed through customs, and then stand in a very, very long line.  I just happened to be near the end, within the last 10 people of the end of the line.  I was in that line for 6 hours...and the only redeeming thing of all of this was that they gave me a night at the Marriott Hotel, with free dinner and breakfast, and it was SO NICE!  The room was so clean, the shower was so hot, the food was great...I was so relaxed!

The next day, I returned to the Panama City airport, and we made it safely out of the bird danger zone.  Finally getting to Chicago was such a relief, and finally being back home has been a wonderful weight off my shoulders.  Just being back to life where things go correctly and where daily life isn't a struggle to get things done and where I don't stand out like a sore thumb, it makes me such a happier person.

So, I thank God for landing our plane safely, while at the same time giving me a little jolt and reminder that life's end is unpredictable - we are never promised tomorrow before it comes, so we must recognize the beauty and privilege of today!  Thank you, dear Lord Jesus Christ for getting me home!

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Last Day In Quito



First of all, I am thankful for many things for this year, for this time that I have spent in Quito.  I am thankful that I was never robbed, that I was never harmed, that my security was never threatened.  I am thankful for the people that I worked with, for their kind hearts, for welcoming me so quickly into their lives, and for being there for me when I needed them.  I am thankful that I had the opportunity to live in another country, for a longer period of time than just visiting...to begin to understand daily life, and not just be in awe.  There are many underlying facets and faces of a city, it's people, and what daily life really is, that can often be missed by quick travels and trips.  Yes, even travels can open people's eyes and help people gain perspective on the world;  but I believe living somewhere affects things very deep in the heart and soul. It changes you to live outside of your norm, outside of the culture you have grown up in, outside of all that is comfortable and close to you.  Thus I am thankful to have the unique opportunity to do what people have assumed is taking a year off of "real life" and exploring something new (although I will argue this has been as real as life has ever been). 

I am sad too, to leave behind so many patients, and a job that I really enjoyed.  It is such meaningful work, helping to find patients who rarely get any healthcare, and typically really shoddy healthcare at that, and then connecting them with the resources and correct services to help give them life-changing treatments...surgeries, medicines, physical therapy, etc... the patients are so grateful, so loving, so happy with what we can do for them.  It's a beautiful job.  It's meaningful.  It's very real. It's very important... I will support Timmy Global Health's work all of my days!

Lastly, I am happy.  I am thrilled to return to comfort, to my family, to my friends, to people have known me for so long.  I am thrilled to share the memories of the holidays with loved ones, and not to be alone.  I am thrilled to start a new job, as a nurse in the US, and begin a new chapter in life.  I am excited to see what lies ahead, and to trust that God knows what He's doing.  Although it is always bittersweet to leave a place that I will remember fondly, it also is a great opportunity to embark on the new adventure with a fresh face forward.  Plus, not everything in Quito was sweet as roses...I had daily frustrations with being an object for those on the street or the bus, or anywhere I walked or went...it was something that got to me like nothing has ever gotten to me before.  It ate me up, and I started dreading leaving my apartment.  It was such a strange phenomenon that occured without me even realizing it - that I really avoided anything that made me leave my apartment!  It was so unlike me, a person who is typically ready to do anything and jumps at any chance to not experience FOMO (fear of missing out).  I became a "hogareƱa" or a homebody.  Not that I didn't enjoy my time reading great books, and listening to music, but at some point even that becomes unhealthy and you need some social interaction.

So, I am ready.  I'm ready to come back to an old but new environment.  New because I have changed.  I have grown older, gained more wrinkles, even had my first gray hair!  But I've also learned more my strengths and weaknesses... the feelings of solitude...the feelings of being an outsider... the extremes of my emotions... what true gratitude looks like....what life can be like in its simplest most pure form...and most of all, I have learned the love and mercy of Jesus, which is an infinite, never-ending and all consuming love...

So, here I come.  Back to the place I have known all my life.  Back to my roots, back to my family.  But also back to a new adventure, a big adventure, an endeavor unlike before.  Here we go!

Where the Sidewalk Ends
from the book "Where the Sidewalk Ends" (1974)

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
and before the street begins,
and there the grass grows soft and white,
and there the sun burns crimson bright,
and there the moon-bird rests from his flight
to cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
and the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
we shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow
and watch where the chalk-white arrows go
to the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
and we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
for the children, they mark, and the children, they know,
the place where the sidewalk ends.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Year 25 of life

Well, I have now completed 25 years of life on this lovely planet.  What have I learned and accomplished in this past year? I have learned more than ever in this past year of living in a different country, separated from how I grew up and my friends and family.  Gaining a new perspective on life, and the millions of ways in which lives are lived, has been very eye-opening to me.  I have learned so much about how far my comfort zone can be pushed, and have seen myself be changed over the course of a year.  I do not have any deep reflections about being twenty five, although I was joking about having my quarter-life crisis.  I actually think I'm beginning to gain more peace of mind, versus being in any state of crisis, as parts of whom I am become more solidified. 

"It would be better for me to have a musical instrument or a chorus which I was directing in discord and out of tune, better that the mass of mankind should disagree with me and contradict me than that I, a single individual, should be out of harmony with myself and contradict myself." Plato

I understand this fully.  For so many years I found this discord within myself; living one way, yet judging the same actions that I made.  Living one way, out of tune with what was going inside of my head and heart.  Living one way, a child of sin, while desperately trying to hold on to some inkling of innocence and wishing to be a better child of God instead.  The disconnect between thoughts, beliefs, and my actions, absolutely tore me apart.  What I feel now is a new revival of myself and my soul, that life can be lived the way that I had viewed it before, and that life does not have to be led in sin and personal destruction.

I am very thankful that through this all, God constantly called to me...constantly tugged at my heartstrings, however fragile they were.  He has never left my side, He has always been there.  I simply ignored or distorted the calls before.  I am so thankful that He has given me such good friends and family that are still here for me, supporting me, who also share the same beliefs.  I pray that other people that I know are also opened to His loving embrace and mercy, so that they may share in the joy and peace of the Lord.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Strong Enough

God typically only allows things that He thinks we will be strong enough to handle; or that, when we are made to see how weak we truly are, that we rejoice in the Lord and ask Him for his divine help.  My sister said to me, "Em, you must be pretty strong if God thinks you can handle this".  I know I am not strong enough myself; but I trust that God will see me through the future trials.  If I take each day just one at a time, I feel much more at peace. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8JsRxVczmQ

"Whatever did not fit in with my plan did lie within the plan of God. I have an ever deeper and firmer belief that nothing is merely an accident when seen in the light of God, that my whole life down to the smallest details has been marked out for me in the plan of Divine Providence and has a completely coherent meaning in God's all seeing eyes. And so I am beginning to rejoice in the light of glory wherein this meaning will be unveiled to me."

A friend of mine told me something. She said, "Em, I know this isn't what you had planned for your life, but you're an adventurer, and this is your next journey." This isn't at all what I had planned.  But perhaps the things that we plan so perfectly keep us from relying and trusting fully in God.  Perhaps when everything goes perfectly, we start to feel invincible, we start to feel so blessed that we forget whose grace is blessing us.

This wasn't in my plan...but now it is. And I will ask God for courage, patience, understanding and faith every day.  I, at this point, have to throw my hands up, and just trust.