Have Cheap Luggage, Will Travel

After spending the last 9 days in Okinawa, Japan (a small island south of the mainland), I have so many blogs that are rolling around in my head but I will try to consolidate them to a collection of concise thoughts for now.

What I learned about Okinawans:

They pave their road in asphalt made of sea shells - They are surrounded by one of the largest coral reefs in the world and have a ton of it lying around. The Japanese know how to be efficient that is for sure.

They take a 2 hour naps in the afternoon – The crazy thing about their napping is that if they are working outside, they just lay down on the ground right there.

America nearly killed everyone on the island once – Being in Okinawa was really embarrassing for me most of the time I was in town because I was an American. First off, my brother-in-law is a Marine and is stationed there. 75% of our military presence in Japan is on the island of Okinawa and Okinawa constitutes less than 1/10 of the land mass for Japan. So basically, Americans have over run the island which is only 65 miles long. The worst part of this is why we are even there in the first place.

In the battle for the Pacific during WWII, we bombed the crap out of that island in order to get a foothold to attack. When I say that I really mean it. In the first 24 hours of the Battle of Okinawa, we dropped almost 4,000 tons of artillery shells on the island. More than 1/3 of the civilian population of Okinawa lost their lives. To be sure they took many of our soldiers with them, but it was still daunting to see.

I visited the underground tunnels where the Okinawan military made its last stand. They had a museum there that had pictures of the villagers that were maimed by the bombing. There were a lot of kids. Most of the 4,000 soldiers that made their last stand in those tunnels committed suicide over their defeat. I put my fingers in holes blasted in the tunnel walls from grenades that helped with those suicides. I felt a little bit like a Nazi visiting a Holocaust museum.

What I learned about me:

I want to be a mom worse than I knew - My sister has a 6 month girl and 4 year old boy. Sometimes when we would be running around, I would have my niece on my hip with my nephew’s hand in mine and I loved it. While I was there, I changed poopy diapers, kissed scrapes, made food. I tell my friends all the time about how I can’t wait to be a mom but that feeling just multiplied by a million.

I love my sister more than I knew – On the plane back home I felt what can only be described as intense sadness. I missed her and her family so bad that I wouldn’t let myself think about them for fear of bursting into tears. More than once while I was there, I considered what I would have to do to just stay over there. Running through scenarios of how I could dump my life in exchange for a life with them made me realize how bad I want her to live by me.

There is more to come but this is the stuff I needed to get off my chest right away.

My sister almost died when she was a teenager. She took a bunch of Tylenol and drank a quart of vodka but still woke up the next day.

I must admit after it happened, I was shook up but the realization that I could have only had one sister instead of two only hit me a few years ago.

On Friday my dad told me that he thinks that my sister took a weak pill like Tylenol because her suicide was “a fake” and she only wanted attention.

- No matter that most people that commit suicide with pills use Tylenol along with other drugs.

- No matter that suicide is the third leading cause of death for teenagers.

- And certainly no matter that my sister told me that she intended on dying that night.

I thought that when you had kids that you were on their side no matter what. Apparently I was wrong about that.

I am mad. Mad at the blackness that exists in this world but mostly mad that it has found its way into my family.

I don’t believe in accidents or coincidences or purposeless people. We were all created as individuals with our quirkiness for a reason.

My mother’s whole life is about her kids. When she was growing up all she ever wanted to be is a wife and a mother. She’s never said this, but I think that she only wanted to be a wife because the end result was kids. Everything revolves around me and my sisters in her life.

It can wearisome sometimes for me as one of the kids but I realized the other day why is has been so hard for us lately. My mom hasn’t had a job in her niche in a long time. She is a leader but not the figure-head-follow-me leader. She leads you as she is walking right beside you. Sometimes you might forget that she is even there which makes her an excellent trainer for businesses and she hasn’t done that kind of job in a long time which is why the overemphasis on us kids lately. She has no outlet for the stuff that she was created to do.

So what is my purpose? I really couldn’t tell you to tell the truth. True to my Google lovin’ self I googled, “What is my purpose?” First thing that pops up, “Do you feel like a looser?”…Maybe I should stop. Next thing that pops up, “Find your purpose in 20 minutes.” That’s not going to do it…Next thing, “Rick Warren’s answer to Purpose.” Okay, I really give up now.

Google didn’t help so I spent some time rummaging through my own knowledge library in my head. Things that I thought were important a year ago, even last week sometimes, are not important to me now. So what now…

I think I am at the conclusion that to understand my purpose or why I was created, I need to start with my creator. What does that mean?

The God I believe in is a personal God who cares about me as an individual. So for me to get to know Him is not within a book or study class but simply hanging out with him in the quietness of the morning, over coffee of course.

Maybe you don’t really believe in God or his plan for your life. Maybe you think we are all an accident and you believe that you will come back as a tree when you die. But in the words of Morpheus, My beliefs do not require you to believe, and that believing disbelief in your purpose won’t prevent you from discovering it, just as a lack of belief in gravity won’t prevent you from tripping.

A friend of mine at work had a panic attack last week at a conference. It was really unsettling to me because he has been one of several people at my job to have panic attacks in the last few months.

Most of my life I have griped about my jobs. The only job that I can think of that didn’t make me crazy was my 4 year stint as a sandwich artist that was housed in a local gas station. Even as I write this I am starting to realize what made me love it so much. It wasn’t the job so much as it was me. I was in high school but I was balanced in the things I was involved in. I worked a ton, but I had drill team. I did a ton of drill team stuff, but I had great friends. I hung out a ton with my friends, but I spent a lot of time making sure I had good grades. So I had balance in all things.

It is very difficult to have balance at Women of Faith and it only gets worse the higher you are in the organization. Now that I am older I am starting to see the bigger picture and that people are not always victims of “the man”. There is usually a well functioning system of abusers and enablers. At my current job, too much is asked of my superiors and they ask too much of me. The problem is that people never say no more. They just quit. Or have panic attacks.

When will it be enough? Well, I am not waiting for somebody else to yell fire. FIRE!!! I am on fire and I need help! I am not so sure that bitterness or a panic attack or a new job is not waiting for me down the road because I won’t say anything.

You guys can pray for me because I don’t imagine that this conversation with my boss will be a fun one. Maybe it just is what it is, but I guess it’s not very fair to not give my job a chance. I wonder how she will react. “Hello, I’m on fire. Can you help?” :)