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.

Moments

Having done this a few times I recognized the importance of moments while in Panama this year. When you are that hot, tired, uncomfortable, hungry, moody, out of your comfort zone...you get the picture...you need to take moments and appreciate the beauty that they offer in and of themselves, ignoring everything else surrounding that moment.

Through the process of grief I realized that it's actually extremely helpful if you treat life the same way. There are in fact good days. And there are good weeks. And there are even good years. But most of the time there are good moments. And what I've found is that I need to appreciate them for what they are rather than trying to make them extend into a day or a week or a year. And so I've decided to have a new category on my blog for these moments. Many of those moments are not on a camera, but some of them are...and this is one of them...

The Return to Normalcy

My brain is definitely not sure what is going on. I feel like I'm different but everything around me is the same. The best I can offer up is this...

I'm in the office.
I can't believe I'm back in the US.
I can't believe that Panama is over.
I have 225 e-mails to read.
I miss my snacks.
I miss my naps.
I miss my people.
I miss praying for the vast majority of my day.
I can't believe I'm back in the US.
I can't believe that Panama is over.

As is usual, I don't really have the words to describe the trip yet...it usually takes me a few days if not weeks to really get my brain around the whole thing. But we are back. And all is well.

Beautiful

Day 30: a photo you find beautiful

My mom would have turned 56 this week. There is little about my mom I don't find beautiful, but for some reason from the time I saw this going through pictures last August I have always thought she looks beautiful here.

Lucus

Day 29: a photo of your favorite person from history

OK, so perhaps this is a cop out, but I'm not feeling a serious post right now and I can't think of anyone who would be my favorite person from history that wouldn't sound cheesy, so...I'm going to use the word 'person' and the word 'history' VERY loosely. Meet Lucas.

Which one is Lucas, you say? The suitcase of course. He wears a permanent name tag.

Now that you are thoroughly confused, let me explain. Anyone who has read the Panama blogs knows that life gets a little intense on the islands. I mean when this seems like a relaxing moment you have problems.

So, you take your moments of entertainment where you can get them. And this actually starts prior to ever stepping foot on the islands. The process of packing meds can make a person go a little crazy as well. We have literal pallets of medicine to deal with! After the medicine is broken down from the manufactures packaging (which wastes tons of space and weight) and redistributed into ziplocks (much less space and weight), the meds are organized into suitcases. Last year we tried something new and had people assigned to know what was in each of the suitcases at all times so that we could answer any questions about them and so that we could find anything we needed. Jen and I were assigned this task, which involved organizing the medicine by island so that each island got equal amounts of each type of med, organizing those into bags so we knew what was in each bag and then assigning an number to have an easy reference (i.e. in the case of finding out a kid just split his head open, Jen and I could grab our lists and yell 'pull bag 10, we need the suture kit...oh and you think I'm kidding about that don't you).

So, all that to say that when we were organizing and numbering all the bags we found Lucas. Lucas has traveled with us to the island for many years, but for some reason he's never received a number (the bags were often numbered we just didn't really use the numbers all that much). If you look at Lucas again you may be able to guess the number we assigned him. 11. His yellow straps made it look like he had already chosen his number and for some reason this made us laugh really hard, and as a result made us love Lucas. Then the fact that we had a name for Lucas made us love him more and made us start referring to him as him rather than it, which made us laugh harder, which made us love Lucas all the more...I think you see my point here. At the end of the trip when we were deciding which suitcases to leave with the extra medicine for our soldiers we did not have to think very long before we knew that Lucas was made for the assignment (if you don't know why we had soldiers please refer to the About Panama section). We were sad to see Lucas go, but he is now happily traveling the Kuna Islands with our soldiers making their lives hopefully a little bit better rather than being locked up in a storage unit for 9 months out of the year.

Which brings us to this year's med packing. We have 13 people going this year, which means we can take 26 bags, which is awesome because it means we can take more medicine, but it also means we didn't have enough suitcases. Jen and I, being assigned the suitcase organization job again, went on search of cheap suitcases that would fit the bill. Goodwill was not assisting very much (although we did finally find some at one of the Goodwills in Charleston), so we hit up T.J. Maxx...where we found a new Lucas!

As it turns out there is a whole family of Lucases! Big Lucases, little Lucases, carry-on Lucases, backpack Lucases - it was AMAZING!

Jen and I ended up being able to get two big roller Lucases for medicine and then we found a little Lucas backpack for her. And then yesterday, Jen showed up at church and said 'oh, Becky I forgot, I found something that I thought you may want to take to Panama'...and produced...

...my very own Lucas. And so, I think the moral of day 29 is a) Lucas is awesome and b) Panama packing makes people crazy :)