Adjusting Your Brain

For the first few days I was back from Ecuador, I kept waking up thinking I was in Quito. That’s really interesting, because I’ve never ever done that before in my life. My mom would always worry about me waking up and freaking out, not knowing where I was if I stayed at a friend’s house or my grandparents’ or my aunt’s. But never in my life have I woken up and wondered where I was, even for a second, until this August 8.

In fact, I don’t think I stopped waking up thinking I was in Quito until the pulled muscle/nonfuncioning lungs incident of August 22, when I’d instead wake up and think “do my lungs work today?” (for days, the answer was usually “not quite”).

I’ve also been really stuck on cars for the last week. My mom got a new car, so now I’m driving hers and Colin’s got mine. Not only do I walk out into the garage in the morning and back in at night and wonder “whose car is this?!” every single day, I actually looked out the front window at work yesterday and thought “what’s my mom doing here?”

Final example: my clock. Long story short, my furniture was rearranged while I was gone and my clock is now on the left, rather than the right of my bed. Not only is it a habit for me to look to the right to see what time it is how late I am each morning, but it’s a strong one. I ran through every room I’ve ever been in since I’ve had a clock in my room. Anderson, Lawrenceville, Clarksdale, Elizabeth City, Greensboro, back to Elizabeth City, Quito. My clock has always been to my right. I laugh at myself because I feel like it’s a gigantic effort to flip over and look at where my clock is now, but no wonder when it’s not in the same place it’s been for just shy of the past two decades. (I can remember two decades. That’s scary.)

I’d like to think I’m a pretty smart guy and that I adapt to new situations quickly. If you ask me what town I’m in or what I’m driving or even where my clock is right now, I’ll spit out the correct answer. But even so, it doesn’t take a huge change in my immediate environment to just totally blow my mind when actually confronted with that situation. It’s ingrained in my mind to look a certain direction when I wake up or seek out a certain car in the parking lot.

The point of this is I hope I break some of these soon. Otherwise the guy at COA that owns the remaining red Maxima will wonder why I keep trying to get in his car.

Accidental Conversation

I called Sarah tonight. Angela answered the phone. Turns out I had the wrong number in my phone book for Sarah. Angela laughed at me, but we had a great conversation about adjusting to life at home, especially as we’ve both started school and gone back to the business of life in North America.

Then I looked up Sarah’s real phone number and called her. I can’t believe I lucked out and two people actually answered the phone tonight. I can’t even get up with Mike or Julia half the time in Elizabeth City.

Another good conversation about adjusting to the Stateside life, about future plans, and there might have been a mention or two (ha!) of Ely. Getting to talk to both Sarah and Angela made me realize as I told them about the transition here how well it’s gone for me, and how much I’ve been ministered to by my church and the Tangent Minds and certain individuals around me. I was actually surprised by how many positive things I had to list off when I finally got to speak to people who “understand.” And now that I’m heading into a week where I’m not worried about writing a sermon or just plain dying, I know that I’ll also get to have that in Jerry as well. I’ve been hiding out too much.

I have, though, been productive in my reclusive-ness. Maybe all the stuff I’ve got on eBay will fund some of those planned (mis)adventures. And my guitars and cases actually fit in my closet now. But aside from just accomplishing things around the house, I’ve taken some active processing/study time.

Out of our topic about the Word of God at Discussion Group last night came a “homework” idea. Each of us are going to be reading Romans 12 every day this week and coming back with our thoughts. Having been focused so much on verse 2 lately, and having heard the first half of that chapter at literally every single service that I attended for a week from the morning of the 17th to the night of the 24th, it’s already interesting what has caught my attention.

I’ll leave it at that to keep anyone from the Group that reads this from accidentally cheating- we’re not allowed to read anything about it but the Bible. That’s the rule. No commentaries, just us and the Word of God for this discussion. I feel like we’re not going to need an actual topic next week. I’ll have notes.