The Emotional Reality Hits

ARRIVAL

So I'm here. I think that the crazy trip over here helped to detach me from my old life and completely turn my biology inside out and upside down. After an early morning flight to LA I sat and waited for 4 hours for the Air New Zealand terminal to open. Then I met up with Michelle for our 10 hour flight to London. We chatted, ate, watched movies and didn’t sleep much. We watched “Night at the Museum 2” which was great, I can’t get over the lisp and “The Secret of Moonacre” a B grade tween fantasy flick with a great cast and fantastically ridiculous costuming.

On the ground we successfully got from Heathrow to Kings Cross and on to Leeds. It was quite the production with all my luggage. The scariest part was navigating the Kings Cross tube station without getting run over.

I slept most of the train ride to Leeds and we took a cab to my flat. Upon first entering my new little home I was a bit overcome. I was relieved, disappointed, happy, confused but mostly just overwhelmed. It’s not really fair to spring something like that on a person when you’re so vulnerable from jet leg. But I am very glad that we had few days there before heading out.

We sat down for a few minutes to get a grip and change before heading out to explore the neighborhood. The neighborhood is lovely and the main street that we live on is tree lined and the sidewalk is made of giant paving stones. We picked up some groceries for dinner and headed back.

We went to sleep around 10. I was full on black out no dreams asleep. A house or car alarm woke us up at a quarter to 2. It went off for a long time and it was hard to get back to sleep. Then of course I was just lying there and thinking, which is not good in my current state and I started crying. Michelle asked if I wanted to try to sleep or to get up and talk. We got up and I broke down, but Michelle is an excellent counselor. I’m so thankful that she’s here to provide a second set of eyes and perspective. She’s been through this whole move your entire life to the other side of the planet by yourself before and so she knows what I’m going thorugh. We talked from 2-5 and it really helped a lot. Then we slept from 5-10ish.

REACTION

My life these past three years has been fantastic. And the past two years has been rather consistent. I’ve been really really focused on work and I’ve been social and had an incredible support network, unlike anything I’ve ever had in my life. When I started EdCC, the mission and UW it was really hard. I was at times scared and nervous and sick. I would put all my nerves and fear in my stomach and often be sick effecting my appetite etc. Besides some misgivings about applying for the EW job, my life as a teacher has been blissful. It has been a lot of hard work but I have LOVED it. I threw myself into my work and was richly rewarded with a feeling of satisfaction and confidence and I found success and grew and was loved by students, colleagues and parents. It has been by no means perfect but it was absent of the paralyzing fear and emotional toll of previous challenges.

This reminds me a bit of the year before my mission that was so fantastic and then the mission was so hard. So here I am on my new mission, stripped of my comfy Hobbit hole and part of identity.

My life has been consistent and on the whole I’ve been balanced if not a bit self absorbed and too comfortable. I’ve had difficulty sometimes focusing on Spiritual things. Now I’ve been ripped wide open and am a pulsing ball of emotions right on the surface. The twisting pit in my stomach has returned. I haven’t missed it. I think that recently I’ve really either been not feeling things or have really been in control and now everything is rough and raw and I’m trying to ride it out.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and visualizing my life here- going to school, shopping, riding the bus, going to church and activities. I also anticipated freaking out and some thoughts that I would have that would want to make me chicken out. I tried to plan ahead for those eventualities and to remind myself that I chose this, I wanted this. I knew this would be hard, that it wouldn’t be better to go home, that it takes time to get set up in a new place, but as the emotional reality hit I had to ride it out because you can’t reason with emotion. I’ve felt scared, trapped, alone and that was just in the first 48 hours.

Fortunately I am not without coping skills. Having Michelle here as helped and I’m storing up inspirational scriptures and quotes, moments of peace and comfort and other things I can hold on to like remembering what my goals are for this adventure. Besides getting a degree and long awaited musical training I purposely put myself in this situation to knock down some of my barriers and limitations. I chose this life knowing it would create a situation in which I would be required to rely upon the solely upon the Lord, increase the spirituality of my life and the closeness of my relationship with Him. And so with my hand in His, here we go.