Thanks to the Lou

Back in Korea my boyfriend and I started a tradition of thanks. At the end of each day, we wrote down 10 things we were thankful for that day and one thing we had learned.  At first, this was quite a difficult task. It is not exactly natural (at least for me) to think throughout the day, "I am so thankful for this glass of water. This air I breathe. This disrespectful Korean child. . ."

I don't think that gratefulness is a natural human instinct for anyone. I think it has to be learned. And the more often we forced ourselves to sit down and think through our day, intentionally recognizing all we had been given, the more natural it became. Eventually, it became less of a chore and developed into something we even looked forward to.

My favorite part of it all was sharing with each other what we had written down for the day. It was always eye opening to see what the other person had recognized in that given day.

Sadly, I have not practiced the art of thankful writing in months. The last 'thankful' journal entry I have is dated back in March, when I was in London for an evening en route back to the States. My excuse for lack of thankfulness is that I always wrote my thanks and things learned and then shared it with "Bob."

Well, Bob's not around anymore. And although there have been several times I seriously considered sitting down to contemplate my day intentionally, I have not—out of Fear. What if I have another break down? Who will I share my thankfulness/things learned with? I have no one to read it to. I just can’t.

False.

I can.

Bob is gone, folks. And that leaves you :)

Today I am thankful for:

1) HGTV. I grew up without cable. And I could care less about real estate. But for some reason HGTV calms me. It miraculously distracts me from my own meandering and often depressing thoughts. It makes me think of my dear friend A.P. in Fayetteville and all the times we watched International House Hunters over sleepytime tea or red wine.

2) A meeting with my mom's boss concerning a career change into non-profit development. It was actually quite helpful and encouraging. There is hope. . . I will not wait tables for the rest of my life. . . maybe.

3) 'Tour of Homes' with Coldwell Banker Gundaker. Am I a real estate agent? No, I am not. Do I ever wish to be? Absolutely not. But sometimes my dear mother likes to take me along on her real estate ventures and act as if we are a mother-daughter realator team. Today I enjoyed touring a 93 year old three-story home complete with pet odor (hair + urine) strong enough to make any grown man violently vomit and then faint. The tour of homes was entertaining, to say the least. Anything to float your boat, Mom :)

4) Coffee date with sister. Enough said.

5) Full 45 minute afternoon nap, completely void of howling siamese cat and 9 neighbor dogs barking incessantly at aboslutely nothing.

6) A splendidly cool/functional a/c in my car on days such as this 93 and humid St. Louis day.

7) Bike rides and blueberry ale.

8) A life-altering conversation with my big bro’ over Shakespeare’s pizza and Shock Top.

9) The opportunity to meet at least 15 new people every time I go into work at the Little Hills.

10) Wine bottling. Historic stone brewery. Donuts. Classic Rock. Free wine.

*Today I learned:

That I don’t have to freak out over going to my ultimate frisbee game because “he’s the one who taught me how to play.” I don’t have to pretend I never taught in Korea or traveled Southeast Asia “because I went with him and I just can’t talk about it.” I don’t have to quit being thankful “because that was our tradition.”

So here’s to ultimate.

And to traveling the world.

And to giving thanks.

And to everything else I’ve avoided for the last three months because it reminded me of him. 

Here’s to living beyond the pain.

On Fear

Today I got an email from Bethany. It was a reply to my reply. She had written me her heart and I had responded in the most sincere and empathetic way I knew how—also attempting to take myself off the pedestal she had placed me on.  I was vulnerable. I was authentic. And I hoped she would remove me from the high place in which she had placed me, for I feared if she didn’t, one day I would simply come tumbling down without either of us having any sort of control. I do not belong there. On a pedestal.

But she didn’t.

She didn’t take me off her pedestal. In fact, she told me that she knew she had placed me there and intended it to stay that way because it is where I belong. Bethany told me that one thing she loves most about me is that I have no fear—“You just do things.” She said I do things without worrying about the outcome—I just act, fearlessly. She said she wishes she could be more that way.

What?

Less than 24 hours previous to me reading these Bethany thoughts I sat in the car with my dad sobbing uncontrollably, telling him my greatest weakness in life. . . is fear.

It causes anxiety, panic attics, nausea along with a vast array of other physical ailments. “It is debilitating!” I yelled between tears to my father.

But Bethany—she says I am fearless.

And that got me to thinking, what if I am?

What if I am fearless after all, but Negativity and Disbelief in Self wants so badly to work its way into my mind and prevent me from doing great things that I accept as truth that I AM AFRAID.

My friend Fern says that fearful people don’t move to Africa with a girl they’ve seen twice and ‘known’ for only two months.

They don’t return to Africa alone.  

They don’t move to a new city where they don’t know a soul—and stay.

They don’t go overseas to teach ESL for a year and travel Southeast Asia.

They don’t pick up hitchhikers or make friends with burly bearded homeless men.

They don’t river kayak and make friends with strangers along the way.

So you see, FEAR does not own me after all.

And it doesn’t own you either. 

Try

Today's post is painful. It's uncomfortable and it's raw and more than anything it's vulnerable. It is the story of loss and of heartache and of a broken young woman. So if you're not up for that kind of thing right now, kindly move on. It took a bit of courage to pound this out. More than a bit. 

*   *   *

A friend of mine posted a picture of a 'vintage' wedding dress on facebook today. It was beautiful. When I saw it I immediately thought, "I want that. Omygoodness I want that." But so did several other young women who saw the ad before I did. 

In an attempt to not look ridiculous and desperate I sent my friend a personal message rather than posting a comment. 

"Rachel. Don't sell that vintage wedding dress. I want it. One day, I'll wear it."

One day I'll wear it???

I don't know that. 

I don't know that one day I will wear it. I don't know that one day I will wear a wedding dress. Recently I've come to realize that not only will I not be married by age 30, I may not be married until age 40. Surprisingly, not only was I okay with this idea, I was actually excited about it. In a way, it was a bit freeing to finally accept that the race to the altar shouldn't be a race at all. Regardless of what I had allowed myself to believe for 29 years, I am not, in fact, on a pre-arranged timeline that specifies marriage by age 30. 

The fact is, I am more effective as a single young woman than I am when in a relationship. I think I always have been. Something happens when I attempt to combine my life with someone else's. My identity is lost. My purpose. My self-esteem. My confidence. My independence. The list goes on. . . 

 I have learned as of late this is not only a common struggle for all women it is actually a gauranteed struggle for all women. Maybe some worse than others. 

That being said, along with this new singleness came the enlightening realization that not only does God have big plans for my life, He could have big plans for the next ten years that does not include marriage. This gave me a quite unexpected sense of newfound freedom.

I could move anywhere in the world. 

I could change my career. 

I could start a career. 

I could do anything I want. . . because I have ten years. 

The truth is, I have more than ten years. Somewhere along the line of birth to childhood to teenagehood to young womanhood I got it in my head that marriage is gauranteed. Period. Some people have to wait longer than others. Some people get divorced. Some spouses die. Some people go through zero bad relationships and others go through zillions. 

But everyone gets to get married--eventually. 

Right?

Wrong. Not everyone does. A lot of people don't. I am not entitled to a marriage. And I am not entitled to children. I am not entitled to my dream job. I am not entitled to working arms and legs and lungs. 

I just think I am. 

For 29 years I thought I was. I thought because I'm female and I'm witty and although perhaps not 'easy' on the eyes not hard on the eyes either. . . I thought these things meant I get to get married. By age 25. 

By age 30. . . 

By age 40?

We have choices in life. We have choices that determine the course of many things. But there are many things that we don't have a choice in. We don't choose what family we are born into. We don't choose our parents and we don't choose how they will act toward us and raise us. We don't choose our health. We can make healthy choices, but we cannot determine our health and well-being and future on our own. Life does that for us. 

I am 29 years old. If you would have asked me ten years ago where I would be in ten years, do know what what I would have said?

"Hopefully I will be on a farm. In the country, just on the edge of town. In a house with a wrap-around porch. With ten children. Five from my husband and I and five adopted. And a dairy cow and a couple horses and a tire swing in the front yard. I will have published a New York Times Best Seller."

I live in the suburbs. In my parents house. In St. Louis. There is no wrap around porch. There are no children. There is a cat, and a dog, and a talking parrot. There is no husband. There is no cow. And I have not published a New York Times Best Seller. 

I don't get to assume. Not anymore. I don't get to assume that Life will give me a husband by a certain age. I don't get to assume I will get married at all. I don't get to assume I will live on the edge of town one day on acres of beautiful land with a house full of children and the royalites of my book to live on. I don't get to assume because the fact is I am not entitled. 

No one is. 

I get to try. I get to try to change the world, one life at a time. I get to write because I know I can, regardless of whether or not anything ever hits the best seller's list. I get to try to find a job that makes me feel alive. I get to try and touch everyone I come into contact with. I get to try and I get to hope I make a difference. 

And as I sit here more broken than I ever knew I could be, I try. As I struggle to crawl out of bed every single morning because it hurts to breathe, I try. As I sit here aching, desperately pleading the clock to please go faster that I may heal--I try. 

I try and I hope, because that is all I am truly entitled to do. 

 

Comfort

I just got off the phone with a dear friend whom is currently living in a camper in a church parking lot in Colorado. The beautiful thing is that we laughed about it. There was no remorse there. No empathy. No sorrow.

"You live in a camper and I live at my parents house in the suburbs. We're both unemployed. And we're going to change the world."

We are going to change the world, you know. We already have. She did so in Thailand. In Bolivar, Missouri. In Colorado. I did so in Korea. In Africa. In Mount Vernon, Missouri.

Changing the world doesn't mean becoming the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerhoweveryouspellhisname or Mother Theresa. The world is made of inviduals, you see. So when we change one life, when we reach out to one single person, we are changing a part of the whole.  A part of the whole world.

We are changing the world.

But change can't  happen when we remain comfortable. That is what we decided tonight. That is what I decided in Africa. And in Korea. And have yet to figure out how to live out here in constantly comfort-seeking America.

Comfortable is just a nice synonym for complacent.

And I strongly dislike complacent. I despise it, in fact.

When we become fully comfortable we become fully complacent. We look around us and say, "This is good" but we don't mean just that moment--we mean forever. We mean that this is where we want to be and how we want to feel and what we want to do forever. We mean that we have come to a place in life where we feel good. Where alll things seem certain. We mean that we have fulfilled our life plan or dream or goal and now we can stop and rest easy. Now the hard part is over. Now we can just be.

I hope I never remain comfortable. If I do I will be entirely disappointed in myself.

I wasn't comfortable at the Children's Home as a live-in staff on the nights I went into my room and fell to my knees sobbing after hearing my residents' stories of incest and rape. I wasn't comfortable in New Orleans in the humidity and heat and constant cloud of bloodsucking mosquitoes. I wasn't comfortable in Uganda when I saw the muddy, disease-infested pit the kids' called 'water.' I wasn't comfortable in Moore, Oklahoma when I watched an 82 year old man pick through a pile of rubble that was once his home.

 The uncomfortable parts of life forced me to act. They forced me to feel, to change, to advocate. They forced me to live. 

I was comfortable in Korea. Not at first, but eventually. And traveling southeast Asia, for the most part, was comfortable. It was vacation. It was seeing the world. It was being a tourist. It was living my hard-earned reward after teaching a year abroad. But I was not living then. Not really.

I was going through the motions of a world-traveler all the while thinking, "This is it? This is good. This is a dream. This can't be hapenning. This is real. This is heaven. But. . .this is it?"

Do you know the most beautiful thing I saw in all my travels?

It was the faces of the slum children in Farridahbad, India.

I spent less than an hour with those children and it was enough to wreck my world. I had got it all wrong. The Taj was no comparison to their faces. To their touch. Nor was the Ganges. The Himalayas.
I was uncomfortable there, in their arms. In the slums.

And I felt alive.

Korea Randomness

* Koreans love octopus. They especially love LIVE octopus- the kind that suctions to your throat as you try to swallow.

I will not be partaking of live octopus.

* Drainage issues- such as clogging the shower with hair- are universal. Only in Korea for some reason it creates a stench so horrid your entire apartment will reek like raw sewage. Also it may be difficult to take a shower as everything from your kitchen sink (water AND food) as well as grime from your washing machine will drain directly into and flood the shower.

*Genuine maple syrup is $20 from the E-Mart international aisle. I recently discovered that boiling water, brown sugar, and fresh orange juice will make a SPECTACULAR orange syrup that goes just fine with just-add-water pancakes :)

* Korea is cold. And rainy. And wet. And polluted. And Changwon is a BIG city with lots of people. But we are surrounded by mountains and oceans and parks adn hundreds of other Americans/Canadians so it works out alright.

* African market was great. But Korean market is SUPREME. And it's on the 4's and 8's (eg; March 24, March 29. . . ) so it provides something to look forward to more than once a week.

* Koreans love Nike, New Balance, and North Face. Basically "N"'s--besides North Korea of course :) They like to wear bright, neon-colored tennis shoes with every outfit, no matter how dressy or bussiness-like.

* Koreans don't stop. Pedestrians do not have the right away. But every time I start to get angry that I almost got hit, I remember the 50,000 times I almost died in Africa due to negligent and crazy drivers. . .and I'm still alive.

* Drip-brew coffee in Korea is ridiculously expensive. I went to Starbucks one of my first mornings here thinking that Starbucks prices are always universal. WRONG. A tall drip-brew was $4.50!!! Lame. I invested in a plastic, $6 french press and buy the cheapest ground coffee I can find at *8.50 a bag. Bah.

* Koreans love to drink and screw. There are no drugs to be found. Sneaking them into the country results in an automatic death penalty. Stealing is unheard of (it is like proclaiming poverty) and murder, if it does occur, is national news. But you will find smartly dressed businessmen by the hundreds on the streets of Changwon, wasted and puking. and every barber shop pole you find on virtually every street corner is an understood "find prostitutes here." Welcome to Korea :)

* Koreans are rich. They have to be. At least the ones that live in teh city. I don't know how people go to so many schools, have so many name brand clothes, eat out so often. . . It's time like these I miss my $0.25 Ugandan avacados. Here they are $4 a piece.

*Teaching is OK- but Korea is better. It seems that is the general consensus of all who teach here. Teaching is tolerable at best. The hours are slightly horrible, the days are insanely long, adn the kids are brats. But at the end of the day we have a rent-free apartment in downtown Changwon, a decent salary, a ton of other world-traveling friends, and things like Friday night Ultimate Frisbee, Hot Yoga, Girls' Night, Korean BBQ, weekend trips to Busan, Game Nights at Ar.To Coffee--the list goes on.

Korea!

Well here I am in Changwon, South Korea and it has almost been a week since we first arrived! Honestly I think it flew by- so that is a good sign I think :) There is so much to catch up on I'm not even sure where to begin. . .

Tim and I flew in on Monday evening and were picked up by one of our Korean co-teachers, Nikki. In Korea they call their teachers "Nikki Teacher" rather than simply "Teacher" or "Teacher Nikki." So I am "AmyRose Teacher" to all of my kids :) We were glad to see that someone was at the airport to pick us up because that was one minor detail we forgot to ask our recruiter about. Ha! We were put up in an hourly hotel for the first 3 nights because our apartments still had the teachers we were replacing living in them. The hotel was. . .interesting? It charged by hourly rates so basically it was sort of a brothel. It's where all the prostitutes do their business. In the elevators the prostitutes would leave their half-naked business cards lining the elevator floors. Also we saw a TON of barber-shop pole things on almost every corner. We thought, "Oh wow that must be a universal symbol for barber!"

FALSE.

Those barber shop poles are code for "FIND PROSTITUTES HERE."

Welcome to Korea :)

Ok so what else. . .Oh we finally got moved into our apartments! Tim and I are in the same building. He is on the 9th and I am on the 4th floor so that is quite nice. His apartment has HUGE windows and he can see blue sky!!! I, on the other hand, open my window and literally have ONE FOOT between me and another building. 4th floor. No sky :( I was super bummed at first and tried to get Tim to trade me but I've settle in my humble 4th floor abode and actually like it now. Except that I only get 5 minutes per day of hot water. I learned that the hard way when I took my first shower last night. I also learned that the ginormous bottle of 'shampoo' I thought I was buying was actually conditioner. So I only have like 2 oz. of shampoo I brought from the States.

I attempted to do some dishes today and learned that my 5 minute hot-water issues I ran into in the shower was an apartment-wide issue. I can only hand wash dishes for 5 minutes at a time in 20 minutes intervals. Or I can wash them in cold water. Gross. We have washer/dryers in our apartment but they are two-in-one and apparently they will shrink all clothes if you try to dry in them. So we all had to buy drying racks. The washer is in Korean/Hongul so I am going to have to guess when I wash things I suppose. . .

Ok enough on my apartment. The area we live in is pretty nice; it is only a 2 minute walk from our school! That makes for very convenient lunch breaks :) Changwon is actually one of the "smaller" cities in South Korea but it has over a million people! Korea is smaller than the state of Arkansas but there 50 million people living here. Crazy. We've been told by other internationals though, that we actually live in a really great location. Apparently we are sort of downtown Changwon and teachers that live/teach on the outskirts of Changwon come to where we live to do everything. I also learned there is a Hot Yoga studio very nearby so I am stoked about that!

Alright I have to go attempt to make toast in a frying pan for brunch. No toaster yet. . . Peace!

Three things.

I own a piano, a guitar, a clarinet, a djembe, a tambourine, a violin, and a banjo. How many of these instruments can I play? I mean, really play? None.

Piano is probably as good as I get, and that's only because I took 10 years of lessons. Right now I can play a song and a half of original material, and 1/4 of Canon in D by heart. I can also sight-read simple sheet music. But that's it. That's the extent of my musical expertise.

Every piano teacher I had informed both my mother and myself that I was very musically talented-that I wasgifted. But sadly, most of the 10 years I took piano lessons, I failed to practice regularly, or even at all. And today, the same story is true. I am capable of playing even less today than I could 9 years ago when I quit playing. And since knowing how to play piano wasn't enough, at age 16 I bought a guitar- convincing myself that since it was so much more portable than a piano, I would absolutely learn to master it and would play it wherever I went. Eleven years later, I still know the same 5 chords I knew back then. My violin I played for a semester in college- "Applied Violin" (easy 'A'). My clarinet I played 5th-8th grade and one summer in college in order to pass the time while my dad rebuilt my 94' Altima. The banjo I bought off Craigslist I gave up on after a week and a 1/2. The tambourine and djembe I shake and beat every now and then but mostly haven't a clue what I'm doing. And what did I almost purchase at Barnes and Noble the other day? Why- a harmonica of course!

Because I am a lover of music- and also partially because I grew up being taught that "Tomlinsons are musicians"- I want to excel at all of them. i want ot be able to jump from piano to violin to clarinet to djembe to tambourine to banjo to guitar and be able to excel at playing them ALL. So instead, I continue to collect various instruments, thinking, "Oh this is the one I'll really practice and learn and master. "

And I master none.

They all sit in my closets or corners collecting dust, waiting for the promise of mastery to finally take place. And the thing is, I don't just do this with instruments- I do this in virtually every area of life. I want to do everything- to master everything- to experience everything.

And instead I accomplish nothing at all.

My passionate desire to touch the world, to make a difference in every capacity for every human being in every situation every second of the day- results in my being entirely ineffectual.

I went to school to study Psychology. But then I decided I'd rather write and switched to English, but then decided I wasn't so passionate about writing when forced to do it- so I switched back to Psychology. And although I greatly enjoyed studying Psychology, I decided I didn't feel like becoming a counselor as I had planned at first--and it seemed that's what all Psych majors planned to do. So I decided to become a teacher, and switched my major to Education, because teachers seemed to me to be some of the most influential people on earth. But after one semester as an English major and barely passing my Education courses, I dropped that major as well. This not only due to my poor course grades, but also because my Education professor looked me straight in the eye one day and told me point blank that I needed to choose a professsion involving helping people, not teaching people, as that was clearly where my passion lie.

So back to Psychology/Sociology I went. It took me 4 years to complete my college degree-which seems normal, except that it was supposed to only take me 3. It was due to my constant changing of majors/dropping classes that I ended up taking 4 years-at 18-19 hours a semester plus Jan-term plus a summer school session. Why? Because I wanted to do everything. I wrote and edited for our collegiate newspaper all four years. I wanted to be a counselor- then a writer- then a teacher- then a . . . I don't know that I ever did really figure it out. I wanted to understand people's minds, to understand them that I may better serve them. But somehow I got lost along the way, wanting to be everything-to do everything- and instead seemed to do nothing at all.

I put my hand in every possible venture- from rebuilding New Orleans post-Katrina, to working at a group home in southwest Missorui, to clean water well projects in Africa and Haiti to sex slaves in India to victims of domestic violence in Northwest Arkansas. I want to do it all. I regularly search out volunteer opportunities with United Way, Habitat for Humanity, etc. I sign up for countless projects and promise my time and efforts to all kinds of people and organizations and end up doing . . .not much.

I work up to 60 hours a week at a mental health facility and spend 1/2 the day making lists of things I need to get accomplished. Then I re-write my lists and add more things. Then I add ridiculous things like, "take off old nail polish" just so I can cross it off the list and feel like I actually accomplished something.

* * * * *

The other day I found a journal entry from March of 2010. I was listening to some sort of sermon or inspirational speech or something and had taken notes on it.

"What FEEDS YOUR SOUL?"

And I responded with the following list:

*Music! Playing, listening, writing

*Writing

*The Abba Water Project

Three things. Not 75. Three. And you know what? Those are the same three things I am still most passionate about. There is nothing about working in a for-profit mental health institution on that list. Nothing about working 60 hours and sleeping 4-5 hours a night and being sick non-stop because I am overcomitting myself. Nothing about writing grants for domestic abuse rehabilitation, or volunteering at a thrift store every Wednesday in between shifts, or trying to do all of the above while also raising $10,000 for a future water project.

Here's to Three Things. I cannot do it all. I can not even do a lot of it. But I can do something. I can write. I can promote clean water. I can expound on those 5 chords I know. And I can continue to love on the unlovable until perhaps I narrow the three things down to one- that I may master.