Part of Me

Misc. tickets, envelopes with toilet paper/napkins (we were never sure what they were meant for, but we carried them everywhere since most bathrooms didn't have toilet paper), a little plastic charm given to me by a student, a cell phone charm made by another student, and the battery to my Chinese cell phone. 

This weekend we went on a trip to Boston, and while there, we attended church. It was the first Sunday of the month, and in our church that means that anyone is allowed to go to the microphone and share some thoughts about the gospel.

A blonde-haired girl who looked to be about my age got up and began to talk about trials. She talked about a time when she and her husband had just returned from living in Chile, and how she sat in church and reveled in the "American-ness" of the lesson, and was just so grateful to have finished the Chile experience, and to be able to put it behind her and move on.

I'd never seen this girl before, but I saw my eyes in hers as she smiled wryly and spoke too lightly, mentioning the experience only briefly and then skipping past it. Skipping ahead before the memories got too painful.

China, my mind whispered. Only you can't claim you've moved on.

I've written before about trying to overcome my China experience. I said at one point that I was going to start writing lots of posts about China, to try to help me work through it all. I then wrote 3 more posts, none of which had to do with China, and then quit blogging at all for the next six months; in part because every time I went to write, I felt guilty for not writing about China.

I've told myself so many times that I want to put China behind me, yet in the same bag I packed for Boston this weekend I carried all the items in the picture above--they've been in that same bag, the bag I use for nearly every trip I take, for the last 4.5 years. In one pocket of a jacket I wear every spring and fall, I still carry a Chinese bus ticket.

I've come a long way in the last 4.5 years. I'm not as jumpy. I'm not quite as cynical. I've even started to study Chinese again, and, for the first time in years, I was listening to a Chinese podcast the other day and had the sudden desire to go to Asia--not China specifically, but maybe someday I'll get that far.

But I haven't moved on. I haven't given up my bitterness for not getting the experience I dreamed about for so long. Despite many people's reassurances that someday I'd look back and only remember the good things, my memories of China jump straight to the depression, the sickness, the frustrations, the injustices, and the week at the end that left me with 6 months of PTSD.

As I've thought about how to put China behind me, though, the answer I'm coming to is that I shouldn't. Instead of trying to put it behind me, I think I need to take it inside me, and make it a part of me; not in the traumatic way it's been a part of me up until now, but in a conscious, I can learn from this sort of way.

Up until now, I think I've done that only with one aspect of the China experience: being sick. During my first pregnancy, as I got up every morning and puked before heading off to class, I reminded myself that I did the same thing in China, and that I was still somehow able to go stand in front of classes of 50-85 students and teach. Because of that precedent, I knew I could go sit in my classes and finish my degree, even while sick, and even when my burgeoning belly no longer fit in the desks and I had to sit sideways. I received power because I internalized a difficult experience.

I don't know what lessons I'll learn from the rest of the experiences, and I may not have a "lesson" attached to each post I write. But I hope that, in writing out some of these things, I'll be able to learn the lessons that this experience was meant for. That I'll find power, instead of pain, in my memories.

After all, I survived. And anything which does not kill us is intended to make us stronger--if we will let it.

(Now lets see if we actually get any posts about China this time...)

Weeds

Cim took this picture. She's been having fun with my camera.

Today Cim and I helped my mom pull weeds from some overgrown flowerbeds. My memories of weeding hark back to trudging out at 6:00 a.m. as a child to go hoe between the corn and scrabble with dirty fingernails at the pesky weeds around the green beans before it got too hot and muggy. It's funny how something you hate so much when you have to do it can be enjoyable when it's a breezy spring day and you can stop whenever you feel like it.

Today, as I tugged at clumps of tiny purple flowers, I remembered being about five years old, and being stunned to hear my dad call the Morning Glory flowers "weeds." They were beautiful, and suctioned so nicely to your nose when you inhaled deeply; I didn't understand how they could be weeds.

I had not yet learned that anything growing where it should not steals nutrients and space from things that matter more. The minuscule purple flowers I was pulling at today were weeds not because they weren't pretty, but because they didn't belong, and they were taking over.

My mind fixated on that as I heaped my pulled weeds into a pile beside the flower bed. What are the flowers in my life that are actually weeds? The things that are pretty, and good, but not the best?

It's dangerous for me to ask introspective questions, sometimes, because I just might find answers. Today, my answers were things like this:

• Reaching the end of the day with "exercise" marked on my goal chart but not "study my scriptures."
• Making time to study Italian but not to read a book to my daughters.
• Staying up researching housing options instead of going to bed early enough that I can get enough sleep.

Good, better, best--so often it's about perspective, the constant struggle to hold on to the perspective which will keep me on track with my long-term and eternal goals. Figuring out what are flowers and what are weeds. Having the determination to pull out the weeds even if they're pretty, because I can put something better in their place. And then following through and planting better flowers, or crops, in the space which has been freed.

Tonight I replaced my impulse to scroll through Facebook with writing this blog post. Picking weeds.

Bed-Time Stories

Cim "crocheting a hat for Cousin Zoe" with two pieces of grass.

Lately Cim has decided she wants stories at night instead of songs. I've started telling her micro-stories, 1.5-2 minute stories which are made up on the spot, usually about animals. It's been a great boost for my creativity, and we've both been enjoying it. Lately she's begun helping me, and sometimes telling her own. Here are a couple of examples.

Me: "And then the little ballerina--"
Cim: "Jumped out of the water like a HIPPO . . . no . . . a dolphin."

Cim: "Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a mommy who told me to go to the temple. Once upon a time there was a little boy who wasn't afraid of scary monsters. Once upon a time there was a little boy, and he wasn't afraid of scary mommies. Once upon a time there was a little boy who wasn't afraid of monsters, or mom mom mom mom mom mom moms, or grandmamas, or grandpapas, or daddies, or monsters. Once upon a time, the end."

Happy With Motherhood

At lunch yesterday, over PB&J, I spent two solid minutes mooing with my one year old. She moos very fervently, with a guttural, punching beginning sound going into a sustained, airy "oooooooo" at the end.

I've had my share of struggles with motherhood. There are many days where I just want to get away from these adorable little crazies. Days where I had two children under age two, and envied my husband, though he was going to a job that he hated, just because he got to get out of the house. Days where I would finally see an adult face and I would jabber incessantly, horrified with myself but feeling unable to stop talking simply because I was so deprived of adult interaction.

I had postpartum depression after Cim was born, and over the last year and a half I've battled through several rounds of depression brought on largely by my husband's stressful and abusive work situation which, among other things, caused him to be gone for 14-16 hours a day for most of the last two years, and to be very mentally and emotionally run down. On top of that, I have a daughter who is just now starting to ALMOST sleep through the night at 15 months old, and lack of sleep wears me down faster than anything else.

But as I sit here now, with Cim purposefully dribbling grape juice down her shirt and Mari waving crayons and squawking like a pterodactyl; as I marched in circles around the driveway yesterday singing "The Ants Go Marching" and "Found a Peanut" with Cim; I realize I not only know this is where I'm supposed to be, I'm happy with it.

(And I decided I'd better write about it so that the next time I'm struggling I can read this and remember, haha.)

Chasing Butterflies

This morning is chilly and gray. I gear up for a day stuck inside with the two girls--breaking out the crayons early--but, to my surprise and our communal delight, the sun appears and we escape the house.

I open the door, and my girls rush out, Mari pausing to go backward down the step from the door to the porch, and again from the porch to the walk.

"Chase my shadow, Mommy," Cim hollers immediately, beginning her new favorite game. Leaving Mari cackling and waving her arms behind us, we take off down the driveway and run back and forth, taking turns jumping on each other's shadow.

Mari runs in haphazard zigzags, sometimes in the grass, sometimes on the asphalt of the driveway. She examines sticks, rocks, dandelions, and purple clover, pausing only briefly with each before running on to the next new thing. That's how she's lived since she began crawling at 5.5 months old.

As I tire and begin to slow, I notice small white butterflies flitting about the fields surrounding the house. "Look," I say, holding Cim still with one hand and pointing with the other.

"Butterflies! I can catch them!"

And she's off.

Mari and I tag along, sort of. Mari staggers over the bumpy ground of the field that has not yet been plowed for soybeans or hay. She's in no hurry, at times plopping down unceremoniously to study a clump of grass, or just to whine for a moment and get a hug before wading through more of the grass clumps that come past her knees.

Cim is off in the distance, her magenta "dancing skirt" flapping as she runs, her black shirt contrasting with the  glow of her blond hair in the sun. She runs back and forth, chasing first this butterfly, now that one, laughing and shrieking, and not caring at all that I'm a small figure in the distance.

How easy it is for her to leave me behind, my mind whispers. How easy it is to go from one butterfly to the next, never looking back.

My mind hints that there's a metaphor there; something about chasing insubstantial things and not realizing we've strayed from the path; or, on the other hand, something about how a goal, even one that may change before we get there, can help us travel farther than we ever would have dared otherwise.

But today, she's small, and so far from those important life decisions for which a metaphor might be useful; as for me, my mind is fuzzy with warmth and light. It's spring. Summer and fall will come soon enough. I'm not going to question it today. Today I'm going to chase butterflies.

Craving Language

(My current desktop background, to remind me of my goal to learn Italian. Not sure who gets credit for the original pic.)

My youngest brother got his mission call last week. For those of you who aren't familiar with these, it's a letter that tells him where he will be living and serving as a missionary for two years. As part of the preliminary paperwork you tell them what languages you have experience with, or if there's a particular area you're interested in, but the call is a complete surprise and will often have nothing to do with what you've studied.

Nate is going to be serving in Tokyo, Japan. As he read those words aloud, I watched via webcam as he grinned, laughed, shouted in Japanese, and fought back tears. Nate has studied Japanese for three years--two in high school, one in college--and he has dreamed of going to Japan for even longer.

I was overjoyed for him, but in the back of my mind, I had a sudden realization: By the time he comes home from Japan, I will be the only one of my siblings not fluent in a foreign language. My older brother speaks Portuguese, thanks to being a missionary in Brazil. The next brother went to Denmark and speaks wonderful Danish. Now Nate is going to Japan. On top of that, my husband currently speaks about 4.5 languages.

Long after hanging up with Nate, I continued to be bothered by this thought of being the only one who couldn't speak another language. Part of my frustration came from the fact that I've done more formal language study than any of my brothers had before their missions; I studied Chinese for 3.5 years, one and a half of that in college and the other two a very difficult high school home-study course from a university, and I took two years of college Spanish. I studied 20 hours a week for Spanish 101--practically a part-time job--so it wasn't like I was just coasting through the classes, either. I wholeheartedly wanted to learn the languages. And then, just this year, I started studying Italian.

But my last Spanish class was 3 years ago, and while I still understand a fair amount of Spanish, I can't even form simple sentences anymore. It's been 4.5 years since I wanted anything to do with Chinese (ask me about my trip to China sometime when you have 2 hours or more to hear the story), and only recently have I been starting to pick up the pieces of that one, only to find I don't know what to do with those pieces anymore. Meanwhile, my Italian thus far consists of phrases like "Mangio il cioccolato," or "I eat the chocolate."

As I started to write in my journal about what I was feeling, I made a discovery. I wrote,

"I know that spiritual growth is the most valuable part of serving a mission, but I've never envied that, because I feel the Lord can give me that in other ways; but ever since I realized I would not serve a mission before getting married (I felt that long before I even met Ryan), I've envied those who get to serve foreign-speaking missions."

Even as I continued writing in that angsty, frustrated vein--venting my continued frustration over the dreams that were shattered during our trip to China, and berating myself for beginning multiple languages but never studying them long enough to be good for anything--I felt a small, quiet voice in my mind say, "If God can give you the spiritual growth without the mission, why can't he give you languages?"

That little thought stuck with me long after my tears and ink had both dried on the page. I had set goals the week before, some of which regarded language study; and though as I was writing that journal entry I came very close to crossing them right off my goal sheet, that little voice told me to work harder. I decided I could study Chinese and Italian, just as I once studied Chinese and Spanish simultaneously in college. I felt that it was okay if I wasn't fluent in them right away, but that I would be a better person for having worked on them. I felt that if I was consistent, eventually I would have opportunities to use languages to serve, and also the chance to simply enjoy knowing and using a second language.

I began praying for help with my goal to study languages, and suddenly, the 15 minutes a day that I had pledged to do on my goal sheet became an hour or more. My car trips are now filled with podcasts in Chinese and Italian, and my two-year-old suddenly stopped yelling at me for the duration of every car trip. My spare moments are now spent learning new Italian vocabulary instead of surfing on Facebook. I find myself repeating Chinese words and phrases in my head that I know I once learned but now can't remember the meaning for. I've started listening to conference talks in other languages while exercising.

I may not emerge two years from now fluent in a language, as my little brother will. But I'm learning. And more importantly, my heart is at peace. My time will come.

Nothing Wasted

(Generic stock photo of piano keys--but they're pretty)

Yesterday, we got Uncle Oswald (our 94 year old player piano) tuned. The technician was also kind enough to clean him out (he had layers of white powder ((perhaps cornstarch?)) under the keys, as well as plenty of dust), and she even went so far as to pull out banks of keys and adjust the playing action.

Needless to say, I've been anxious to play.

My darling daughters, however, have not been so anxious to let me. In fact, they've been running me ragged. While I did play one song yesterday, I got to the end of the day today and realized I still hadn't gotten to really sit down and enjoy the new tone and touch of our beautiful piano.

I put the girls to bed, and then sent my husband off to bed as well, because he has to be at work early tomorrow. And then I realized I was all alone, and the house was quiet. (Do you know how rare that is?! I finally understand why my mom would get so excited to be left home alone.)

I was a little worried that I'd wake everyone up if I played, but I decided I didn't care. I needed to play. I pulled out a book of New Age-style piano music by Paul Spaeth that I fell in love with as a teenager, pushed the soft pedal, and began to play.

The music that came out of that old instrument went right through me. There's nothing small about the sound from one of those old uprights, even when holding the soft pedal. The low register in particular echoes and expands and moves right out of the wooden casing of the piano and up your hands, through the pedals into your feet, through the floor, the bench, your bones.

My fingers slid, stroked, and ticked on keys made of actual ivory, keys that have seen more years than even my grandfather, who's 92 this month. Every time I touch this piano, I wonder what music it's played; how many living rooms it's sat in; what dramas it's seen; how many owners it's outlived.

But tonight, my thoughts weren't on the piano's history, they were on mine. I won't go into my full piano history here (I tried to write an essay once about what it meant to me to give up my dream of being a concert pianist and why I did it, and it was 5 single-spaced pages long and still didn't manage to convey what I wanted--I don't want to subject you to reading that), but let's just say that for several years I've struggled to figure out where I stood in relation to playing the piano, and I've lost a lot of technical ability, and so when I would play it was often a bittersweet and frustrating experience.

But not tonight. Tonight I was filled with joy for the blessing that piano has been to me over the years. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for my mother who made me practice when I was younger, who pushed me to a point that when I decided I actually wanted to learn a song, I had enough background to go and figure it out, which eventually led to me taking lessons again and competing. I was grateful for the opportunity I had to learn from fantastic teachers who stressed technique and wouldn't accept less than perfection when it came to a competition piece. I'm grateful I learned to sight-read well enough to just sit down and enjoy playing, even when I haven't taken the time to practice.

One of the reasons my perspective has changed is that I'm teaching piano lessons now. And the more I teach, the more I realize just how much I learned with all those hours of practicing (2 hours a day for most of my pre-teen and teenage years). As I teach a seven-year-old about basic phrasing, I flash back to playing "Invention #1" by J.S. Bach, and chasing that pesky melody as it switched from hand to hand. I think of the difficulty of learning to play one hand louder than another so that the melody would shine through better. As I count eighth notes for a nine-year-old and discuss how to count in 6/8 time, I remember learning how to play eighth notes in one hand while playing triplets in the other, one of the last really technical things I remember learning before I quit taking lessons when I was 16.

And the more I remember learning, the less wasted it feels. I've realized that's one reason I've had such a hard time letting go of my piano regrets all these years: it felt like by not continuing to study piano, by letting my technical skill slide, I was wasting everything I'd worked so hard for. I didn't realize how much of it has become a part of me. I didn't realize what a gift it is to be able to sit in church and play nearly any hymn I'm asked to, even if I'm not familiar with it. I took my playing for granted, until I started teaching and realized just how many things have to happen between my fingers and my brain to make music come out of those keys.

As I sat and played tonight, I saw the wonder of it, and so I was grateful. I didn't mind the sour notes, I just fixed them, and was grateful I knew how. Instead of getting frustrated when my fingers slowed and tired, I saw how much they'd done, and was glad they'd gotten a good workout.

It was a glimpse of a bigger perspective; a view of the process, the results, and the future, even, as I pass the knowledge along through teaching; and it brought peace. It made me wonder what it would be like if I could see the rest of my life in the same way. I wonder what kind of peace I'd find if I could see more clearly the steps I've taken to become who I am, the person I actually am instead of my own flawed and critical perception of myself, and the person I'll be in the future.

Perspective is even harder to maintain than it is to gain, but I've glimpsed, tonight, that my efforts aren't wasted, even when my path turns. I'll just tell Uncle Oswald to remind me of that next time I struggle with thinking I'm working toward one goal when the Lord has a different one in mind.

Sometimes It's Hard

(This is the first time I've written anything so introspective in a long time, and it could probably use about 5 more revisions. Still, I'm going to post it, because I'm proud of myself for thinking hard about something I'd rather ignore.)

I'm working on a couple of dance routines right now for the studio showcase in November. One is a Salsa team routine, and one is a Swing routine. Both are a lot of fun, but last night I really struggled with the Swing. Our instructor asked us to try a couple lifts, and they were lifts I had done before, things I thought would be easy. I was wrong. And almost every time I would attempt a lift, the instructor would give me that same pursed-lip face that my piano teacher used to give me when I hadn't practiced; the look that says, "are you just not trying, or are you really that incompetent?"

I got home at 10:30 p.m., exhausted but not sleepy (a common occurrence when I dance late). I lay in bed for awhile, but I couldn't shut my brain off, so I got up for some food. Which, of course, turned into clicking around on Facebook. Seeing as how it was midnight and I was feeling beat-up physically and emotionally, I decided to have a little pity-party on my status. I figured at that time of night no one would really see it, and I could get away with it.

I was wrong, of course. I received a lot of "cheer up" and "you can do it" responses, which I know were written with love and concern for me, but I found myself arguing with many of them in my head. 

I KNOW a good attitude is important, but all the "Little Engine That Could" attitude in the world won't make my body do something the muscles are not currently capable of.

Yeah, work harder, I wish I could. It's not like I can practice this on my own.

It'll come back--yeah, it would if I could actually practice it. But I'm not likely to ever have the chance to do many lifts again, so it's a moot point.

Time and dedication, two things I can't give right now. I can barely dance twice a week without feeling guilty.

The more I grumbled to myself, the more frustrated I got. But as I stepped back and looked at my internal dialogue, I started to see my real problem, which had nothing to do with the loving, encouraging comments of my friends.

This is more than just me not being able to do a lift and getting discouraged. It's more than being frustrated about the skills and muscles that I've lost (though that is frustrating). And I'm not lacking in confidence, because I know I can work and train my way into being good at lifts. After all, when I started doing lifts the first time, I was very, very bad at them (just ask my old coach--she once confessed to me that after our first lesson she wondered if my partner and I would ever be able to learn any lifts). It took a lot of hours and bruises to get to where I was when I stopped dancing to have children.

I know I COULD get back to where I used to be, given the right set of circumstances. Unfortunately, the circumstances required are not available at the moment, and are complex enough that I'm afraid they'll never occur again. The combination of a) time to practice, b) a partner to practice with, c) that partner having time to practice that coincides with your available time, and d) a place to practice that is available at the time you both have available, is a difficult one to find. Beyond that, I have to e) be physically capable of conditioning myself without breaking, which disqualifies any time spent in future pregnancies (lifts are a no-no while pregnant, lol) and whatever time I need to recover from them, and also means I probably can't just say, "I'll do it once my kids are grown" (since I already have trouble with my hips and knees, which have gotten worse with each pregnancy, I don't see myself being capable of doing such a strenuous form of dance in my forties/fifties). That means I only have a few, non-consecutive years left in which those circumstances could even possibly line up. 

I was very fortunate in college to be able to meet all of the above criteria at the same time, but now, without shifting my priority off of my family, I don't know that I'll be able to recreate it. I feel guilty if I take more than a couple hours a week to go dance, because, at least while we're living here, the only times available to dance happen to be the only hours my husband's home, and I feel like I hardly see him as it is. If I could dance during the day, that would be easier, but the thing about ballroom is that it caters to the hours when most couples are free, which means evenings. It's the same reason I wonder if I'll ever teach at a studio--the hours they need are the ones that are the hardest for a wife and mother to give.

I've known all of this for awhile, but it's still difficult for me to face, and it comes down to this:

I felt more passion about doing dance lifts, specifically ballroom cabaret, than for anything else I've ever experienced except for getting married and being a part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. But because God and my family come first, and because I can't see a way to reconcile my personal family priorities with the time and serious training cabaret requires, I will probably never dance cabaret again.

I gave up something I loved so much for something I knew would be better. But sometimes it's still hard.

Getting to dance at all is a wonderful gift, and it takes care of most of the ache. And maybe I'm wrong, and someday I'll do lots of lifts again. Whether I do or not, I'm sure someday I'll look back at this time and smile that wise, introspective smile that people get when they think of their naive younger self; that smile that says, "I see things more clearly now, but I remember the pain was real."

In the mean time, it hurts when I try an "easy" lift and fail. It hurts a little because I think I should be able to do it, but it hurts more because I'm scared if I don't get it right, the instructor will scrap the lift, and I'll never get to do it again.

But somehow, when I recognize why it hurts, it hurts a little less.

Moved by Art

"Gypsy Girl with Basque Drum" by William Bouguereau

This painting moves me. I first discovered it in my mid-teens, and sat captivated by the look in her eyes, the fingers clutching the drum, the hovering tears. I felt those tears, and, as I dealt with all the tumultuous emotions of being a teenager, I turned back to this picture frequently, finding a connection--almost a kinship--which helped me to make sense of my own emotions.

I've always loved the arts, but lately I've found myself yearning for them in a way I haven't experienced in years. Part of that could be how much my world has become removed from them--it's been years since I went to an art museum, sketched, or played classical piano pieces with any regularity. I avoided dance videos for a long time because it was too painful for me to face that area of my heart. I've kept my car stereo filled with things like Tarzan and Ace of Bass (don't get me wrong--these could be considered art, just not the type of art that my soul has been craving).

Saturday, I stopped outside a tourist shop on the Fisherman's Wharf, halted by a clear tenor voice singing in Italian. I stared at a tv screen's image of three young Italians singing their hearts out. I held Cimorene's hand and stared at the screen, transfixed by the music. "Cim, you hear this?" I said to her, pointing at the screen and trying to distract her from the rock she was trying to let go of my hand to grab, "This is music with class. You will learn to appreciate music like this." But how, I realized, was she going to learn that if I didn't expose her to it? Finding the clerk, I asked if she knew who the singers were. She looked at me in confusion or surprise, then said, "Oh, I'll ask." She did, and I discovered that the group was "Il Volo." The Flight. Appropriate, considering the way the song had made my heart soar.

The next day, Ryan asked me to start a Pandora station seeded with Sarah Brightman. I also added Andrea Bocelli and Il Volo. Friends, never have I had a radio station play so exactly what I wanted. It was amazing. In fact, I'm listening to it now, and it's still amazing. And Cim? She now tries to sing the high notes like Sarah Brightman. We'll work on that.

Last night we went to the church for Ryan to teach a Spanish Family Home Evening lesson. We were there for a bit before anyone else showed up, and I started to play the piano. My fingers are rusty. I stumbled my way through half of  Debussy's First Arabesque. It was my very last competition piece, and one of the most technically difficult pieces I ever learned. I found if I closed my eyes, my fingers could still remember pieces of it. My heart remembered it. And I remembered how I used to cry through my fingers when I needed to let out emotions.

For me, these pieces are connected--the painting, the music. The various art forms belong together for me, because they fill me in the same way. And I want them to fill my children. I want my children to listen to "Time to Say Goodbye" by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli. I want them to know paintings by Bouguereau, Degas, Van Gogh. I want them to appreciate classical ballet. I want them to see art, and be moved by it. And maybe, someday, to create it.

But even if they don't, I want it for me. I want to be surrounded by those things. This weekend, I was reminded of that. It may be one of those things that I have to remember all over again a few months or years from now, but for today, my heart is lighter. Today, I'm grateful for art.

China Therapy

Picture taken from hot air balloon in Yangshuo, China

This week I was asked to give a 5-6 minute presentation on China for a women's group activity at church. I was reluctant, and realized almost immediately that it was because I didn't know if I could talk about China for even 5 minutes without sounding bitter.

It's been four years now. Four years ago this week, I was experiencing all my China "firsts." Going to China was a dream I'd had for years, and it had finally come true--though it quickly became so unlike my dreams, or any of the stories I'd heard. Maybe this is why I'm so bitter, this comparison between the stories of others that inspired my own dreams and the actual experience I was given.

But after four years, if I'm still bitter, it's not China's problem. It's mine.

As I prepared for my presentation, I read back through all our blog posts from that time period (anything written in 2008), and I was a little surprised by the types of things we'd written. I had forgotten some of the funny stories. With some posts, I was amazed by how we had skimmed over what was really happening, telling pieces of what we thought people would want to hear, or what we thought they should hear. We told the truth--but generally just the smallest or most pleasant parts of the truth.

I also went back and looked through our pictures from China, pulling some together for my presentation. There were gorgeous pictures of Yangshuo like the one above--the two weekends we spent there were the best in our China adventure. There were pictures we'd taken in excitement when we'd first arrived. There was one picture Ryan had taken of me after we'd been there a couple months where I could see the deadness in my own eyes.

Perhaps I'm being overly dramatic. The immediacy of my negative reaction whenever China is mentioned, however, has convinced me that I have some working-through to do. Since writing is one of the ways I work through things, don't be surprised if you see several posts on China in the near future. I hope to go back through and write about both the good (there were moments of it, which I have to remind myself) and the bad, and hopefully find some peace. The posts will hopefully be scattered in with some other posts that I've had spinning in my head; looking at my post count from this year, I've been pretty consistent with one post per month--not impressive. I'm recommitting to write. (I'm sure I've said that same thing at least a couple times a year for the last couple years, but at least I'm trying, right?)