Thoughts on The Crash Reel now published

     I found this unpublished thought from this summer. I'm not sure why I never published it. Perhaps, I was still processing it then forgot to come back?? I'm sure I had more thoughts than I ended up writing about but they might just be lost forever!

     "The hubs" and I recently watched The Crash Reel. It was a really, really well done documentary on the crash and ongoing recovery of 2010 Olympic snowboarding favorite Kevin Pearce! Kevin spoke at a Brain Injury conference in 2011, not long after his injury. I actually got to talk with him the next day as he sat on a bench waiting for his mom to pick him up. We talked about our struggles and I offered my coping strategies. I tried to encourage him that it would get better, SLOWLY! We talked about our families and what an important role they play in recovery and acceptance of what happened!  I knew he would never remember that conversation but I hope at the moment it was what he needed to hear.

     In one scene of his documentary, the camera caught when somebody woke Kevin up from sleeping.  His eyes popped open and he just stared at the camera. "Hubs" looked over at me very solemnly and says something like, "That was the exact same face you used to have;  that blank, panic, I'm trapped stare." Later they show him out of the hospital and he is talking to people but I recognize the look of feeling completely detached from the world as it spins on. I looked at Nate and said "he has no idea what is going on around him even though he probably fooled everyone in that room!" I still have these moments 10 years later but not as often as I used to!

Thoughts on fall

Views from my childhood home!

     I have always loved fall with the cool, crisp air. I love wearing jeans and hoodies again.  Every year as fall arrives I have the urge to pack my stuff and head to college; the college that my memory has created. You know, the return to seeing and living with all your closest friends. The possibilities that lay ahead! That is the college I long to  return to when the air turns cool and the days get shorter. Ironically, as a teacher post college I dreaded the start of another school year.  The filling out of applications to find a job and the stress of not finding one. I think substitute teaching was my least favorite job ever!! I conefess that sometimes , when the phone rang at 6am every morning, I couldn't even bear to answer it. I couldn't face another day as a substitute!  The teachers I had gotten to know always called me the night before to tell me they had requested me, I didn't mind their classrooms.  I knew the kids, schedule, and school so I always took those calls! It was the fall right before my aneurysm that I kind of sensed God was up to something, though I would have never imagined the story He would write! Totally frustrated, I decided to take a semester off from my Master's program and I took a job at a small newspaper doing their classifieds! What I thought was just a short period of time to refocus, turned out to be a life changing year!
     Our worship leader Sunday, spoke words that I quickly jotted down so I wouldn't forget them.  This is the gist of what he said, "God tells the trees to change and they do immediately, dropping all of their old leaves. When God tells us to change, are we that willing?" So, there I stood all teary eyed and pondering.  I thought back to 2005; the year of change, big change, total and sudden change.  I was not so willing as the trees.  No, I spent everything I had left trying to "prove" I hadn't changed.  I was sure I could convince therapists I didn't have a BRAIN INJURY!! If I had had the energy, I would have fought it kicking and screaming (ok, maybe I tried it a few times but I had NO filter then. Now I just have just a broken one!) Oh, silly tree scared to loose your pretty leaves! Then I started to think about a tree loosing its leaves.  What was left of it was a bare trunk, the core of who it was, exposed against the realities of the coming fierce, cold season.  Those pretty leaves couldn't save it from the reality of winter and would perhaps zap it of all the energy it would need to stay alive, to survive! Drop your leaves you silly tree. They are indeed a part of you. For a season they help to identify you.  But, the core of who you are will survive and when the winter passes, new leaves will form and you will identify yourself with them once more. The new leaves will look much like the old ones but they will never be exactly the same, maybe they will be even thicker the next year, as your trunk grows stronger, and your roots go deeper, through the fiercest season. Let go silly tree, just LET GO! 

There can be beauty in the process of change!

This tree, in my current yard, is a good listener!