The Fear of Waiting

The night before a huge event that you know is coming can be filled with a lot emotion. I remember so many nights before Christmas staying up whispering to my cousins as we tried to hear Reindeer and Sleighbells. The night before any first day of school was always alive with anticipation - good and bad - as I awaited the new adventures, stories, friends, struggles that the year would bring. The night before I went back to teaching after being gone for five weeks was like that. I think I slept two hours, my mind riddled with anxiety. Would I throw up? Would I be exhausted - who am I kidding - How exhausted would I be? What if there was a fight? What if there was another threat to the school? etc. etc. 

When I rolled out of bed the next morning, I was pretty mad at myself. If I could have just shut up my brain for like 30 minutes, maybe I would have gone straight to sleep. Maybe I would've even gotten good sleep! Now, I would never know, and the thirty minutes between waking and walking out the door were over in the blink of an eye.

A Tribute Part 3

Recovery

One of my favorite parts of growing up in my house was a tradition we had with my dad. I don't remember when it started, but my dad would read us a chapter or two from Harry Potter every night. We didn't read it on our own, but we got to experience it with each other and in my dad's voice. Sometimes when I'm rereading the story or watching the movie, I still hear his voice reading the words. I love that.

So for the entirety of the book and movie franchise, it was an amazing bonding experience, and I always treasured any Harry Potter moment with him. I will never forget there was this one line that my dad used as a lesson. At the end of book four, Dumbledore tells Harry "We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy." I don't remember the exact conversation that followed, or if he mentioned it after reading that part of the book or when we say the movie, but these words have resonated with me since then because they are so true.

That is exactly why I have rewritten this several times. Completely scrapped drafts and started from the beginning.  It would be so easy to sit here and detail all the times I cried and hurt like when the young family of four started sitting in front of us at Mass or found out people I had to see on a regular basis were due right around the same time I should have been. That would be easy. But especially as reactions to my first post rolled in, I remembered that I'm not just writing for me. There are people who pick up my story who were right there beside me every step of the way. There are people who had no idea how to respond or help. There are people who didn't know I went through any of this and are experiencing it for the first time as they read it. There may even be some strangers who stumble across it who don't even know me.

So both for you and for me, I'm not going to get into every single wound and tear in this post. There are certainly some areas that I'll focus on in the following posts, but if this post is about recovery, I want to focus on the things that helped me recover - not the things that made it harder. I want to have a balance of joy and grief, hope and suffering. Even if it's not the easy way to write about my experience, it's the right way to write about it

A Leap of Faith

My view all week

Well my dears, sorry for the late post, but I was on the beautiful shores of Flathead Lake, Montana.  For those of you who haven't been that far west, I highly suggest it.  One of the most amazing parts of Montana are the colors. I've never seen so many shades of blue in the sky, the mountains, the lakes - especially Flathead Lake.  The other incredible natural aspect of Flathead was the weather.  Although the lake is in the northern part of Montana, it was a gorgeous humidity-free 90 degrees all week (aside from a 20 minute hail storm).  While I could go on endlessly about the beauty of the weather and landscape, I'll use a few pictures to do that and move on to what I did whilst in the "Big Sky Country".