Realizations

Realizations (Sorry this is so old)

August 27, 2007
It is so easy, maybe even human, to focus on the little worries and anxieties in an overwhelming situation and use those to lessen the realization of both the gravity and depth of the situation. I think I might have been doing that. No, I know I have been doing that. Over the past week or so, I have let health issues hang over my head and distract me from everything. Instead of thinking about being in Honduras and using all of my senses to soak up all I can, I have spent hours and hours distracted and worrying over things that cannot be fixed by more and more worrying and shouldn’t be worried about in the first place. What if I had to go to a doctor? What if I couldn’t communicate with the doctor? What if I would have to leave? What if I wasn’t healthy? What if all would not go to plan? All the ‘what ifs ‘….and where did that take me? No where.

My health issues are resolved and I feel fine. And did I worry completely unnecessarily? Yes. What was I suffering from? Nothing…I wasn’t suffering. At all and that’s what I am realizing. It was so easy for my mind to take this little issue and blow it completely out of proportion. In a manner, maybe this was my way of dealing with this overwhelming and huge change in my life. I am no longer the capable, independent, strong woman that I pride myself on being. Instead, my capabilities and my strengths have gone out of the window. I love people and I love spending time with them. I love talking and enjoying the company of new friends and old friends. But here, my strength and my love for being and talking with people went down the toilet day one. I no longer have the tools at my fingertips to chat for endless hours with the people I meet. My independence has disappeared as I have become a member of a group and have yet to learn how to drive stick. The independence and freedom I enjoyed in college is a far place from here. I live day to day with 30,000 sets of eyes watching my every move and with the weight of being a representative of the Church on my shoulders. Instead of feeling strong, I feel weak on a day to day basis. I feel unequipped in almost every situation. Whether it be my shyness with Spanish or the reminder of how awkward I felt as a young teenager, inadequacy is a constant word in my mind.

I am experiencing huge change in my life. Those little things that I have mentioned before like the lack of running water and frequent power outages are not hard to get used. What is hard is to get used or to really understand is that I am here for a year and that the people I love the most are the furthest away from me and that in almost every situation, I will be starting from the very beginning, the very very beginning. Nothing will be easy. Even simple, beginner level conversations might take hours of work and much frustration. Friendships will not happen overnight and trust takes time to establish. Projects will call me to be vulnerable to failure and push me further and further out of my comfort zone. Homesickness will become unbearable and I may never know success as I define it in this year. I am realizing this all. I am realizing and finally understanding that I will struggle. But that is why I am here. I am not here to be comfortable; I can do that at home. I am not here to excel; I can do that at home. I am here to learn what it is to struggle, to fall on my face, and then get back up again and fall again. If I am here to serve those who struggle, I must first understand what it means to struggle, what it means to be uncomfortable, to not have everything I desire, and to not feel competent in many areas of life. Does this scare me? Heck, yes. But at least now I’m not distracted any more.