Changes . . . .

Just a warning, I decided to be completely honest in this update. If you don't feel like wading through the ramblings of a rather drained nun please stop now! To say the least it was a rather emotional week. Seeing my cousin/sister with her life packed in boxes, knowing that life will never be the same. Seeing her mom, dad, siblings dealing with the fact that this is not a year or two of service in another country, no, this is a completely new life that she has chosen. Her future is in Montana. 

Please don't get me wrong, I am so happy for Gloria and Allen. He makes her happy, I can see it plainly on her face. I was just faced, ok, more like hit over the head, with the reality that life involves changes. 

Ok, I'm 24 years old. I know life involves changes. But somehow, I wanted life to be all about the changes that I decided to make. Just the ones that I had control over. I didn't want other people making decisions in their lives that affected me, but that I had no control over. 

I wanted to be able to move back to the states after I am finished in El Salvador and still be able to make the trips I made as a 10 year-old. Those lovely weeks in the summer when we out-of-states cousins would all troop to Ohio and spend the week with Grandpas and the Ohio cousins, making hay, making a mess of Grandpas yard with our water slide, helping the aunts clean out their closets and terrorizing the boys with our dressing up shenanigans, damming up the creek and slathering ourselves from head to toe with mud before we ever knew it was a high end spa treatment.

I wanted to be able to relive those blissful years of 18-21, when we were just independent enough to think we knew it all and thought we actually knew how the world worked and it was blissful, spur-of-the-moment pontoon trips, just because we were all in Ohio anyway, and late night talks on Mark & Reeny's front porch, discussing the worlds problems because we had enough wisdom to figure them out. 

I wanted to be able to move back to West Virginia and fit right back into the niche that I vacated 3 years ago, in the church and the youth and the community. 

But this week/weekend in a series of "enlightening" moments my wishful fairytale thinking evaporated into thin air, the vapor that I had used to construct my imaginary castles. 

As a dear lady, who is a returned missionary as of a year ago, very succinctly told me, "They just don't leave space for you." 

And it's true, life in the states moves on even when I'm not there. Newsflash Mel! And that's exactly how it should be. Thinking other people's lives should wait for me just so I can be comfortable and not go through the growing pains of change. How despicable and selfish is that?! 

But it doesn't make the changes any easier . . . It doesn't make me not want to go back to that innocent 10 year-old me, fishing in grandpa's pond or even the 18 year-old me who knew how the world operated. 

Maybe innocence is bliss after all. 

So now I'm sitting in a corner of the International Airport of Houston, listening to songs that are making me cry and trying to convince myself that I am ready to go back to my kids and pour my heart into them again. Because I know that's the only option I have right now. That the best way to forget about your own stress/worries is to pour yourself into others. 

But right now, the thought just makes me tired. 

I wanna dedicate this post ( I don't know, do people do that?!) to Violet, for all the tears we shared over the weekend, and to CJ, thanks for that much-needed four-wheeler ride Sunday afternoon. Having your life flash before your eyes tends to make you forget about some of the lesser stresses! I'm praying for both of you guys as you continue wading through the changes. 

And yes, I will try to get an update out about my great 12 hours in Panama but right now, I'm thinking a nap might be more beneficial to my emotional outlook on life! But you can't say I didn't warn you!!