Its the rise after the fall that matters

My coach has been an incredible support to me through this entire mess.

Today he sent me an amazing link to a race::  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z19nfan8HOo

There are some things in life I wish I could have in hand for those tough moments. This is one of them. If I could just pull out this video, watch it once or twice, take a deep breath and face head on what is happening.

It's a 600m race of 4 girls. As they turn 2nd to the final bend of the track one of the young women is tripped by her racing competitor. But what happens next is what makes this absolutely incredible. She takes a really hard fall, flat on her face but without a second of hesitation she is back on her feet running her heart out. The auidence stands in amazment as she begins to quickly catch up on her competitors still up on their feet. She passes one, two, and the third racer right before crossing the finish line winning the race! As I watched this for the fourth time I still felt a flood of emotion, happiness and determination. The caption that my coach sent with this was "When I saw this I thought of you." Now that was a shock. I have felt like nothing but pathetic and weak in these past few months. A failure. I have not felt like i've gotten back up. I feel like I'm still flat on my face, staring at the pavement while the other racers blow past me to a great SM year. So instead of me instantly springing back to my feet I feel a hand. A strong hand taking hold of me and slowly pulling me back up. Cause He is the only one who can.

“Would you dare, would dare to believe. That you still have a reason to sing. Cause the pain that you’ve been feeling can’t compare to the joy that’s coming. So hold on you gotta wait for the light. Cause the pain that you’ve been feeling is just the dark BEFORE the morning”

So I don't feel like I've reached "the morning" yet, nor do I feel like its on its way. But it's coming. Even if it takes this entire year....

Honestly I'm miserable

Title is directly stolen from the book by Heather Bohlender. And the best advice she gave me was, blog honestly. Completely, whole-heartidly, at the time, honestly! So here goes...
Miserable....shocking. That is NOT how an SM is suppose to feel right?.....right.
     This whole experience of the start of my SM year has left me with a lot of realizations, fears, failures, and overall has left me with an insurmmountable strenght I could have never claimed before this year (not gained on my own that's for sure).
      I want to scream and shout and tell everyone that my SM expereience is not NORMAL! I've been uprooted, moved, beaten, abused by "christian" authority and then expected just to have a great year somewhere I didn't choose to go, doing the opposite of what I was doing and loving! Well then I can turn around and can see that every SM struggles. None of us are Super SM but I think we all expect ourselves to be. No one says what they are really feeling or thinking. Of course questioning and struggling would be wrong....After all we are SM's. Wrong! We are human. We need to think of ourselves every once in a while. I use to think that this year was now all about being miserable and saying that I was serving in the process. I feel wrong if I start to work on "me" or even start to question my spirituality. This year is about service but what about me? Since when did I get lost in all this mess?
      The advice I've been given is usually very positive and uplifting and has gotten me through many late nights of tears and questions and early mornings of fear and trembling. Through this entire expereience I think the greatest lesson learned was that this world is full of sin and even when pain arrives at your front door and creeps into heart that does not equal the absence of God. I had this idea that I didn't even know I was keeping that if God really loved me He would keep me protected from pain and suffering however in the past 3 months I have seen that that concept could not be any further from the truth. While I am still continuing to learn, grow and forgive I can still say that God has not abandoned me. When it seemed like every single person on this earth could not understand my situation (except Britt) or become to busy for my cries, He must have heard them. And then I also look back and say that I have been so supported all along, these friends and family have not forgotten me. In fact I've had a loyal few by my side, emailing, mailing, talking, praying through this all none stop. No I do not feel peace. No I cannot say that I am happy or content but I wake up every morning, still walking, still moving, still BREATHING. And I vowed I would NEVER say this but if thats the only evidence I have of Him, then I guess I'll cling to that for dear life. My aunt has been sending me encouragments everyday and I have been saving each and every one of them on my computer. One of them says "When you're down to your last hold, keep holding on, even if it's just by your pinky." So most of the time it seems like I'm not even holding on anymore, I guess my pinky is still holding up:)
       The most frequent piece of advice I've heard is "Sophie, stop trying so hard. Just let go." Really?! seriously? That is so abstract. If I don't try anymore then I will literally sink so low there's no coming back up. How can I just stop trying? Because to be completely honest there is no esxtatic, extacy of feeling in devotions, or anything sometimes. That makes me sound so wrong! How can an SM not be ABSOTULEY on fire for their relationship with God? I feel ashamed to say it. But guess what? One other thing I've learned is that I am SO HUMAN. I've never been so broken down, so low before in my life. Only to see that I am not perfect. And my faith has never been based on anything but ideas and happy concepts. Having to go through that humilation of false accusations and pointing fingers from "christians" is painful beyond words and embarrasing. If you've been in a situation where rumors spread like wildfire about you and you know in your heart they are so wrong and that everyone seems to be jumping to conclusions miles away, nothing you can do about it is heart breaking. Its so frusterating but it comes back to a verse I heard that says "Leave revenge up to God. He has justice in His hands." So yes, while the rumors hurt and the understand that those people don't understand really hurts, all I have to hold on to is that I know my heart, I know me, they don't and God will take care of the rest.
          There have been countless nights of laying on my bed. Palms up, absolutely flat out on my back, tears pouring down my cheeks just crying out to the ceiling. I say the ceiling cause it literally felt like my prayers only reached that far and just came bouncing back, weighing heavy on my chest. I have never felt so alone in my life. So rejected and alone. So advice to myself. This is a part of growing up. I am not coming back from this year the same person. Impossible.
So now that I've rambled and don't feel like I've even scratched the surface or got out HALF of what I thought about today I'll end it for the night. To a new day tomorrow, to start it all over again.

Office work and Volleyball

Today was rough. Beginning with a 7:00 speed shower (cause it's soo cold) and we have NO HOT/even warm/ water. Its takes a little self pep talk before I even step into the shower in the mornings just to get me through the next 10 minutes or so. Even though it's EXTREMELY hot here the mornings don't bring about much love for the cold water. I quickly got ready for another morning in the office. I started in there on monday and as overwhelming as it was with everything to keep track of and remember I definitely did not find it as draining or emotionally&physically exhausting as teaching grade 3 all morning like I had been for the past three or so weeks. It's a constant battle with them and I would rather be annoyed by the alarm in the office every 30 minutes telling me to go ring the bell rather than constantly be telling Raijan or Joash to be sitting down and closing their mouths EVERY 30 seconds! Its a different kind of stress in the office. And i'm not exactly where my place is yet or what is expected of me but I hope I learn. Time, time, time. Seems to be all I base anything on here. Give it time. Well honestly I hope time passes quickly. I have a countdown to my departure. 35 weeks give or take. Anyways so after my shower I realized that Pamela was not up for the morning in the third grade classroom. She had taught the full day on monday but had probably overdone it and had a rough and painful night so she asked if I could take the third graders in the morning. When I went to tell Andrea this I found out from Lorraine that Andrea was sick too and was probably going to take the morning off from the office. "Oh great!" I thought "Here we go again, except now two are down and out". So I took the third graders and tried to get them to focus all morning on their exam review since their first quarter exams start tomorrow. We'll see how good of a job I did in following Pam's lesson plan when she tests them tomorrow in class......

Today was proably one of my hardest days in PE and conicidentally the hottest. There is no covered gym or even a resemblence of a gym here in Yap. Its just an open court on a raised hill (which is REALLY annoying for retrieving volleyballs and basket balls all the time!!) So just fighting the heat was hard enough. I had the sophmores and freshman today. They are a tough bunch. The freshman are still learning that they are in High school now and the sophmores are just........well they are just them. I wanted to start three man volleyball with them so I made teams on the weekend and set up a tournoment style play hoping to give them something to enjoy and some healthy competition. Well they all had their own opinions and a lot to say about how much they didn't like this three man volleyball stuff. They said it in a different way of course. After a while I just gave up and blew my whistle and kept score and stopped trying to yell over them or teach them anything new. Sometimes they can blatantly and not really care. Its hard enough for me to maintain any form of control outside but there are somedays that they really just let me know that they want to go back to their old style of PE where their homeroom teachers would let them just go play whatever they wanted. Now they have to learn about the sport, take quizzes and do occasional projects and they are so unmotivated its extremely difficult to go against the only way they've ever known. At first it was new and exciting but now they are very hard to get moving and I'm starting to give up. I had this big plan for them, to teach them everything they want to know about sports. To make PE fun. But I think i've failed. They don't enjoy what I plan and some of them refuse to participate. Its so hot sometimes I don't blame them for just sitting down in the middle of the court and wanting to lie down. There is sweat constantly dripping down my legs, back and arms (weird). I had never sweat from my arms before I came here. And of course I burn, very midly, almost every day. .....

I got a package from southern today! Tears streaming down my cheeks as I read all the notes from those back in Tennesse at my beloved school. Tears for two reasons. one is that I miss southern so much. I miss studying (I know crazy idea right to miss studying!) but once you've been a teacher for two months you start to see how much easier it is to be a student. and number 2 reason is that I know a lot of them will not be there when I get back. Graduating, moving on up to bigger and better things. But I still have my time to do at Southern. (ps I got the joker too. Time to sit down and scan it:) The other girls were dissing southern a bit and boy did I want to tell them off. Southern is my pride and joy but I guess that's how it is for everyone and their own schools.

I guess that's where my day ends. Changed my room around so hope I can sleep.

One word: Coby:(

I have only slept about 8 hours in the last 48 hours. Why? One word: Coby. Friday started out like any

other day. Dragging myself out of bed, dreading yet another cold shower and feeling like someone was kneading my gut with their bare hands to start another day. I finish my shower, get ready for school and pull myself together one more time to walk out the door to staff worship. I didn’t think much of this morning except that the phrase “Thank Goodness It’s Friday” kept running through my head over and over. Seems to be a common occurrence lately. Live for the weekend, yet then the weekend is usually my hardest times. When things slow down from the week, when I have time to stop and think, it all comes flooding back. Silence is pains best friend. Anyways so I begin class like any other morning “goodmorning grade 3.” I try to say in my cheeriest voice. A garbled mess of answers is screamed back at me. Then there’s a knock at the door. Now usually my students just walk right in, announce their arrival, happy that they are late and noisily take their seat. So I was a bit surprised to hear the knock.
When I opened it up what I saw took a few seconds to register. There was Sheldon, one of my third grade sutdents whith andrea (our school registrar) right behind him. In his raised up hand he held a little pathetic, black, flea infested ball of fur……a puppy. I just stood there speechless and at first I thought “Oh he’s just bringing it for show and tell.” But the way he pushed it towards me with the smile of his face let me know this was a gift, not be shown or returned. Well I couldn’t keep it in class so Andrea took it back to her apartment, put it in a Rubbermaid box with a towel and her frog prince charming and a bowl of milk. During recess I walked up to the apartment to go check on him. Having only had him for about 2 hours I had already made up my mind that he was going back with Sheldon at the end of the day. I cannot raise a puppy, which is pretty much like having a baby plus be here as an SM. Too much work and I would have to give up A LOT of what keeps me going here (exercise and run whenever I want, sleep which is essential but hasn’t really been happening since I arrived here in Yap). He was crying at the top of his lungs when I got there into the apartment. I decided to ask the other girls what they thought and of course they all thought he was absolutely adorable. So he didn’t end up going home with Sheldon. I knew if he took him back home that this puppy would be thrown into the jungle to fend for itself and either make it as a street dog (dying early from worms and diseases) or die. Ask me this morning after having spent the last day with him (night and morning) I would have disregarded that and hoped that the rumors weren’t true.

Talking to my parents last night I realized some things. When I plan for something and then plans are

instantly changed I don’t deal very well. I can’t seem to find the patience for anything anymore. Everything seems to tick me off and I hate that. This isn’t me. I wasn’t like this before. I stayed in the apartment with Pamela this morning cause she needed to stay back from church cause she was in so much pain last night having to sit through vespers after surgery. I am ashamed to say I also stayed home from vespers last night cause I was feeling so out of it, stomach cramps, nauseated and a headache. I succumbed to the I had a whole speech prepared for when the other girls got home how it was a mistake to keep this puppy, how I didn’t want to raise it for the next 10 weeks till it would stop crying at night, how its hard enough just to be here let alone have to raise this child basically. I have been taking care of it since its got here Friday morning and I am already exhausted and want to give him back. I can’t seem to imagine another night like last night when I’m already tired from the week and then to be up every hour trying to figure out what this animal wants as he cries and cries and cries. Brittany told me last night when we were talking about how he probably has worms and that if he has crust in his eyes this morning he probably has some kind of infection. Sure enough add to his list of fleas, worms now we can place, infection/disease. I wouldn’t have made it through last night without britt’s suggestion of the warm oven mitt. She even talks me through my problems even when we are miles, worlds, oceans apart. That’s a part of why Pohnpei was so amazing. I had my best friend there RIGHT by myside to talk me through it, to comfort me when I wondered if I was really making a difference there, to hang out with, to always know I had someone who would listen to my stupid, petty problems. Now I have to wait till a set time and hope that internet is good to be able to talk to MY BEST FRIEND! that's not right when it was our RIGHT to have a year as friends to serve. But apparently our rights don't matter. Nothing we say matters. I can face anything in life when I have my best friend beside me and nothing seems impossible. She knows exactly what to say everytime no exceptions. So now I'm left with hearing her advice over a crackly, muffled, only works sometime computer screen. misery. So my only life saver was heating up a oven mitt and putting that beside him. It worked a few times to get him back to sleep but then it would only stay warm for about 1 min and then next time he woke up he would freak out again. Of course when the other girls got back from church, Coby turns into a silence angel and sleeps like a rock. I couldn’t get more than 30min in before he was crying again. They suggested we take shifts but all that keeps running through my head is “Sophie, you need to get a grip on this situation, on yourself. You need sleep.” We all need sleep. School/teaching exhausts us enough and now to think every three nights I become a full‐fledged mother. Is this punishment for waking my mom up every night till I was like 10? (she would probably say it was till I was 14):P Lol In any case this just seems to add to everything else and when normally I would LOVE TO have a puppy and he IS really cute but I can’t say I am ready for this right now.
I am reading a book "Overcoming your emotions" that my aunt sent me in one of her AWESOME packages:) and it was saying how you can begin to shut down in emotional situations or problems. I can see that in BOTH myself and Brittany this year. Just waiting, going through each day to get it over with, not talking with anyone, waiting to be able to say, I hop on a plane and leave tomorrow with a smile on my face. The honeymoon phase of my SM year is definintely over, but not by my choice but by Pohnpei's choice.

plain and simple

I miss my Best Friend. Should have posted this five weeks ago

earthquakes and volleyball

All that went through my mind was...."Is this going to get worse?" with Sabrina clinging to my arm we waited for the shaking to subside but it didn't. Finally when things began to click I realized we probably shouldn't be standing/surfing on our apartment porch while the earthquake got worse. Andrea came running right behind us, we probably shouldn't be up here guys! That's when my feet became unglued from my current location on the moving deck and began to run for the stairs.

Just experienced my first yappese earthquake plus 30min later a small aftershock. I don't think it has even sunk in yet that I was really in that. You never think you'll ever go through one of those and when some kind of scary event does take place in your life it takes a while for it to really sink in. All of us just stood outside trying to regain our composure after it happened. Lorraine had just woken up to dishes falling in her apartment, some of the other teachers were out by the shop. The prinicpal grabbed up his kids and we were standing outside our apartment. It seemed to be a flurry of talking and amazement. Had that really JUST happened. The only picture that kept going through my head was looking out into our backyard and seeing the cocunut trees swaying back and forth and feeling like my knees were going to give out. Earlier today I was thinking how I wanted to blog about my juniors/sophmore epic volleyball game but my focus all of a sudden shifted to the latest expereience. Rychelle looked it up online and found out that we were the epicenter here in Yap of a 5.8 earthquake with a small aftershock. I decided I wanted to go for a run to get rid of some of the adreniline only to get caught by the middle school for the aftershock. However a fraction of the size still the same feeling of fear gripped me as I wondered where to go and questioning whether this one would grow too. We all like to have control. Control of our lives, control of our surrondings and when all of a sudden control is taken out of your hands completely we realize that this life isn't ours. It can be gone in a second, so what have we done today to make a difference? I asked my health classes last friday "If you were to die tonight, what would you do today?" I had some classic answers of, "go have fun, skydive, do everything i've wanted to do, party, say goodbye to all my family." But one anwer I go really made me think and it came back to my mind after this earthquake fiasco. One of my students said "Nothing, I already try to live everyday to the fullest." So how am I living my life? What if that earthquake had been my last. Would I be ready....? It makes me look around me deeply, at the people in my life, at my situation. I can't say that I've reached any form of comfort or even close to being secure here in Yap. I still wake up with that sick feeling of having to spend the next 8 months here, I still cry myself to sleep somenights and look away at the sight of new Pohnpei pictures on facebook but it gives you another thought. Gives me another thought. Maybe it's just getting through today that matters and looking back saying, at least I tried.....

It feels like Chaos

Music helps.
I cling to the words of these songs.

Healer - you hold my every moment. you CALM my raging sea. you walk WITH ME through FIRE and heal all my disease. I trust in You. Lord I trust in you. I believe you're my healer. I believe you are all I need. I believe you're my portion. I believe you're more than enough for me. 

From my aunt today:
It's time for healing time to move on
It's time to fix what's been broken too long
Time make right what has been wrong It's time to find my way to where I belong
There's a wave that's crashing over me
All I can do is surrender

(Chorus)
Whatever you're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos somehow there's peace
It's hard to surrender to what I can't see
but I'm giving in to something heavenly

Time for a milestone
Time to begin again
Revaluate who I really am
Am I doing everything to follow your will
or just climbing aimlessly over these hills
So show me what it is you want from me
I give everything I surrender...

Time to face up
Clean this old house
Time to breathe in and let everything out
That I've wanted to say for so many years
Time to to release all my held back tears

I had a really good talk with Kristie Cain today. We had never really hung out at Southern that much but I had always admired her care and positive attitude for all of us who worked for her on the fitness floor (she was our manager:) She just randomly came on facebook and said Hi. It was nice talking with her and we got into what was going on in our lives at the moment. I realized, hearing her struggles as well, that I have been so internally focused that I can't even see those struggling around me. Sometimes all I can see is my pain. But I have so much support, so many prayers, so many people I want to let them know how much they mean to me for taking the time to contact me. We decided to keep eachother accountable. I hope that I can keep this. I know that these days when I can take a step back and see a bigger pictures are few and very far between but I have to cling to them. When my vision is blurred by tears, I still read the facebook messages and emails, I still see the links on my wall from those who care. I mention to her that I was kind of upset that we didn't get to really become friends at Southern but she just said "God puts people in our lives at the time that we need them the most. Maybe this was our time." She is so right. I can say "I wish this, or I wish that had happened sooner, or in this situation I really wish this hadn't have happened" but God knows....I type that with hesitation and fear. But it's true. he does. So to those who have taken the time out of their busy schedules and lives to message me, even just a phrase or picture, to let me know they are praying for me, I can't thank you enough. YOU are the reason I am still here, still fighting everyday, still serving in Yap.

I tried this in Pohnpei too. I wanted to keep track of everything! have a prayer journal, a journal, a blog, a prayer list, make new traditions, keep a list of what I get from people, to stay in touch. Its overhwhelming and now I don't have my best friend Britt to help me:(