School Shopping

Yesterday Brittany, Nikole and I went school shopping...which I haven't done in 8 years...it was pretty hysterical...and quite successful!

Perceptual Adaptation

I am exhausted. This week I attempted to dump my brain onto Word files and e-mails to prep someone else to take over the job I've been doing for the past 6 years. I also ran 5 nights of Vacation Bible School, which in case you haven't worked VBS in the recent past takes quite a large quantity of energy to get things ready, know what is going to go wrong before it goes wrong, fix what goes wrong after it goes wrong, and show no fear, indecision or exhaustion to the kids. And, all the while I suppressed the desire to panic about any of the facts in my life: that in one month I have no idea how I'm going to pay my mortgage, that I'm going back to school in a field that is totally new which takes literally all my brain power to focus and absorb the information, that the one year anniversary of my mom's death is looming on the horizon, that I'm going home next weekend to visit my grandfather for what possibly could be the last time...the list of reasons to panic could go on but I'm too tired to keep typing.

In short my life is upside down. Actually, no, it feels worse than that. In college psychology class I remember learning about a study where they had people wear glasses that made the world upside down and after 4 or 5 days their brains actually inverted everything so that they were seeing right side up again. When they took the glasses off, they were seeing everything upside down, and had to wait for their brains to invert everything again. It's called perceptual adaptation. I more or less feel like for the past two years I have had to take those glasses on and off about 20 times and my brain is feeling ready to give up on telling me which way is up.

In case you were wondering, it's a rather intense thing to feel, and not all together enjoyable. But...it's where am...I am in the land of continuous perceptual adaptation. Here is the thing though. The first few times I had the glasses put on or had them taken away I more or less freaked out. I was out of control of my life, I had no idea what was going to happen and I had no clue what to do about it. For me, that is a reason to freak out. The longer this goes on, however, and the closer the flipping back and forth happens the less thrown off I seem to be. Really, the past two weeks has seen some pretty major changes (so much so that half of you reading this don't even know I'm not going to be working in two weeks...yeah, I really don't feel like going into it) and yet, I'm shocked at how minorly phased I am all things considered. I have finally reached the point where I'm totally fine with waiting on God to tell me where to go next and I totally trust that He is going to. Being able to honestly say that is all by itself a sign of how far God's brought me. It's one thing to say you trust God...it's another to actually do it.

So remember how I wrote a number of posts about how much I hated the question 'how are you' after my mom died? The new question on my hatred list is 'so what is your plan'? Most people really don't believe you when you say you don't know, and you're ok because you know that you will when you need to. But guess what? I don't know. And I know that I will when I need to. My life is upside down, but it will flip back up at some point. Until then I will sleep with the ceiling as the floor.

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three things remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. - 1 Corinthians 13:12-13

God is Wild About Us!

Is there anywhere on earth other than VBS where you can convince boys to wear panda ears, grown adults to wear paper mache panda heads, and shoot tiny pandas out of a leaf blower? Oh Pandamania, we are only one day in and I love you already!

My Soulmate

I have been known to say in the past that chocolate is my soulmate. When these little puppies arrived at my door, compliments of one Ms. Alison Krepp, I certainly was convinced. I mean really - you can get these things DELIVERED TO YOUR DOORSTEP!!!! I am so glad my friends know me so well :)

Me and Dorothy

While reading my first of many research papers to prep for my first of many abstracts to submit to my first of many symposiums, I find the sentence...

“We suggest that the association of emotion-focused coping with dysfunctional outcomes is closely related to the way it has been operationalized in coping measures”

…I am most certainly not in Kansas anymore.

Wow...I have entered a whole new world!

Voices from Afar

On Father's Day my family had a picnic. I was flying to Panama so I obviously was not in Pennsylvania at the picnic, but my uncle Mike took some video and posted it on his facebook page. For the past few minutes I've sat here and listened to it. Not so much watched as listened. Listening to people talking and people laughing. To be honest, when I think about family picnics the first thing that I actually think about is people's voices. Usually so many people are talking at once that you can't figure out what conversation is going on where...that is unless you were actually born in this family and then it's really obvious because you've been doing this all your life. And there are so many people running in and out of each conversation that you lose track of who said what. And so I sat there and listened. I listened to the voices that I miss so much, and the laughs that make me laugh just to hear them.

There was one voice and one laugh that I didn't hear. It's not that I expected to hear it as if as I was watching the video I thought suddenly my mom would be there. But the sound of the picnic just didn't seem right without it. But then why would it?

I never noticed how much you miss a person's voice until I wanted so desperately to hear my mom. I wanted to hear her say anything. We watched videos just waiting for there to be a place she talked. We called her old cell phone waiting for it to go to voicemail so we could hear her say her name. We have an old answering machine message that I have copied onto my phone and sometimes I just listen to it pretending it's not one of the only links to that voice I have. It doesn't really matter what she is saying, just hearing her voice is enough.

It's interesting I think how so often we go through life not noticing our senses other than sight. Sitting here and listening to the picnic with my eyes closed, listening to these voices I know so well, laughs I could pick out of a crowd, reminds me that not every moment is based on what you see...sometimes it's based on what you hear.