Fire around Me, Fire within Me

“The trouble is, you think you have time."-Buddha

"There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds."-Laurell K. Hamilton

"The things you hide in your heart eat you alive."-Anonymous

"She's been through more Hell than you'll ever know. But, that's what gives her beauty an edge...You can't touch a woman who can wear pain like the grandest of diamonds around her neck."-Anonymous

Ten years ago, on this day, I was eighteen years old. I was living in Missoula, Montana, and was a few weeks into my first year of college. Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 was a day just like any other day. I woke up, went to my classes, did my homework, went to the Wednesday night worship that I usually went to, I had no idea that on that very day, my life had changed dramatically.

On the afternoon of Thursday, September 27th, 2007, I was sitting at my desk, doing my reading for my Introduction to Psychology class, when my Mom called. I answered the phone, and said "Hi Mom." Or something similar, and she said, "Jasmine, your brother John just called. Your Dad died yesterday." My Dad had been fishing with a friend of his, and his boat capsized, and my Dad was holding onto the boat, and his friend was trying to pull the boat and my Dad back to shore, and at some point my Dad's friend looked back and my Dad wasn't holding onto the boat anymore. It seems that my Dad had a heart attack, and drowned. He was 53 years old.

My Dad was a man that I never got to know. He left before I was old enough to remember him, and the next time I saw him, I was 15 years old, in the summer of 2004. I saw him for maybe an hour, possibly less, and then after that, he didn't stay in touch. I had this plan, though, that when I was old enough, and had time, I was going to go back out to Michigan, where he lived, and spend time with him, and get to know him, and let him get to know me, because my theory was that if he got to know me, he would want to be involved in my life. However, he died when I was 18, so I never got the chance to know him, which is something I'll always regret. The logical part of me knows that I was 18 when he died, so there wasn't a lot I could have done to build a relationship a that point, but there's another part of me that just thinks I should have tried harder to have a relationship with him, even though I don't know how I would have gone about that. 

A couple of years before my Dad died, I started dealing with depression. I'm not going to talk about the things that led up to it, because that involves more people than just me. I didn't realize it was depression at the time, but looking back, I'm pretty sure that's what it was. When my Dad died, I fell farther into my depression, but I didn't really talk to anyone about it, because I didn't know if it was okay for me to feel that sad about it, considering I didn't know him that well. I kept most of my feelings bottled up back then, and I still keep a lot of my feelings inside, but I am working on talking about them more. I still get depressed sometimes, but I have ways of coping with it now, and most of the time, just talking about it makes me feel so much better.  Knowing that I am being listened to, that someone hears me, and that my feelings are valid, it just makes me feel better. It bothers me when people tell me to just pull myself up and stop being sad, because, sometimes, just getting out of bed feels next to impossible. But I do. Everyday I get out of bed. It might not seem like much of an accomplishment, but somedays, it is. 

Sometimes I struggle with low self-esteem. Not really sure why, but sometimes I feel like I don't have anything to offer anyone. Like I don't have anything to offer the world. Sometimes I'm not sure why people like having me around, or why they are my friends, because I feel like I have nothing of value to offer them. But my friends obviously see something in me that I don't, because they keep sticking around. Maybe one of them will tell me why, someday, because it would be nice to know exactly what people see in me that makes them stick around. But, also, sometimes I feel like people don't actually notice when I'm not around. Feel free to prove me wrong on that. I'm afraid to fall in love, because I sometimes feel that I am just too much for anyone to put up with, but hopefully someday I will meet a guy who can handle me, bad days and all. Anyways, this blog post took an unexpected turn, but I've been keeping it inside and most of my family and a lot of my friends don't know about any of this, but they will now, and it's just time that it's all out in the open. "You don't know my story, but one day I'll be brave enough to tell it"....It looks like that day is here.

Anyways, Dad, I hope Heaven is great, and maybe when I'm there too, in the very far distant future, we'll finally get to know each other.

Burning down the House

So, I have been in England for almost 4 weeks now, and I think I have spent more time in these last 4 weeks, crying uncontrollably over large spiders being in my bedroom, than I have in the entire course of my 28 years and 9 months of life. I've lost count of how many spiders I have come up against in the last few weeks, but it's been at least 7. They are large spiders. Probably about the size of my palm, factoring in the body and the legs and the head. Maybe a bit smaller than my palm, but you get the idea. These spiders are not small. You would think that I would have gotten used to them eventually, but  no. Every time I see a new one, my blood runs cold. Peppermint oil seems to be working, so long as I spray it daily around my room. 

Also, my house is haunted. There are times, when no one else is home, that I hear voices, women's voices. The names of the voices are Edna and Esther. Usually they are arguing about the importance of matching towels in the upstairs bathroom, but yesterday they were discussing going to Stratford-upon-Avon to have tea with William Shakespeare. I asked my nuns about Edna and Esther, and they said that they don't know anything about them, but they have heard them talking, but usually the ghosts don't speak if more than one person is home. There was also a glowing orb by my head one night, and my nuns didn't have an explanation for that, but I haven't seen it again, but we'll see if it makes a reappearance. I think that the ghosts are friendly, so as long as they are friendly, I don't mind them. 

Grace's birthday was on Thursday, so on Friday Allison came over from Wolverhampton, and Grace, Allison, Izzy and I had dinner at Tampopo's in the city of Manchester. On Saturday, Allison and Grace and I met up at the Manchester Cathedral, and Allison had planned a "Surprise Adventure" that lasted for 9 hours 😊. We saw the National Football Museum, John Ryland's Library, the Victorian Arches, and a lot of other things.  It was a lot of fun, but I was definitely tired by the end of the day. So yeah, that's my life up to this point, stay tuned for further updates.

Never Let Age Extinguish the Fire of Your Inner Child

"One way to find out if you are old is to fall down in front of a lot of people. If they laugh, you're still young. If they panic and start running to you, you're old."-Anonymous, but this definitely happened to me yesterday.


A few hours ago, I got back from our "Preparation for Service Conference" in Leeds. Actually it was in Headingley. At the age of 28, I am one of the oldest YAGM volunteers this year, I am the oldest in the United Kingdom YAGM group, and I was definitely the oldest at this conference. The U.K. YAGM program is unique in the respect that while I am serving as a volunteer for YAGM, I am also serving as a volunteer for Time for God, which is YAGM's partner program here in the United Kingdom. So at this conference, there were 8 of the 12 United Kingdom YAGM group, we really missed the other 4, and then there were other Time for God volunteers from Hungary, Germany, Uganda, and also other places from around the world, and a lot of the other Time for God volunteers were 18 years old. There are two of us in our group who are over the age of 25, so we don't qualify for the Rail Card, which gives a pretty significant discount on train tickets. Our friend, Allison, likes to tease the two of us about being "old", by saying things like, "Does it bother you that there are people here who are decades younger than you?" And of course, every time Allison talks, she changes our ages. For instance, when we started Orientation in Chicago a little over three weeks ago, I was 28. By the time Allison and I parted ways today, I was 903. But last night at dinner I was 1,224. So sometimes my age decreases too 😊.

We traveled to the conference in Headingley on Monday, and we had to change trains in Leeds. Well, turns out that all 8 of the YAGMs heading to the conference had to get on the same train from Leeds to Headingley, so we reunited sooner than we thought, and we were all so happy to see each other, because most of us hadn't seen each other since we got to the United Kingdom, two weeks ago today. A lot of the other Time for God people were on our train too. So we got off of the train in Headingley, and we had to walk from the train station to the University Campus where the conference was being held. That was an adventure. We got settled into our rooms, had some snacks, and did some introductions and had dinner. Then we had worship after dinner, and then we had some free time that night. Our group of 8 quickly became known as "The Americans". We were also broken up into small groups that night, of five or six people in each group. Our group of five became known as "The Adventurers".

On Tuesday, we had some free time in the afternoon, so our original plan was for all 8 of us to go to lunch in town, and then go to the Kirkstall Abbey ruins. Well, four of us ended up going to the ruins, and it was definitely worth almost being late to the meeting that was supposed to start at 4:30. The meeting actually ended up starting a few minutes late, and we got there at 4:32, so we weren't really that late.

Yesterday, we were supposed to go into the city of Leeds and do a scavenger hunt. We were walking down a hill, and the grass was pretty slippery, and I fell down. Don't worry, the only thing I hurt was my pride 😌. There were about 20 something of us at this conference, and we all decided to take the bus into the city. We were trying to find the right bus into the city, and we had asked one bus driver which bus was the right one, and he let all 20 of us get on his bus and he drove us to the right bus stop, for free. You won't find that happening at too many places in The United States. Then we got to Leeds, separated into our different small groups, and kept bumping into the other groups at various places, and we did that for a few hours and then went back to the University. We then went over the scavenger hunt, and we broke up into our country groups for part of that, and Grace pulled a bag of carrots out of her backpack, and shared them with us, and it was really random, but also really great 😊.  Last night, our small groups had to do presentations to the rest of the group, about different aspects of culture in the United Kingdom.  Our topic was travel and transport, and our presentation was not perfect, but it was less of a train wreck than I thought it was going to be 🙂.

T

The Adventurers at the Corn Exchange.

The first Marks and Spencer stall. It was opened in 1884.

The Adventurers with Equus Altus. The Equus Altus is a sculpture by Andy Scott. It represents how packhorses were used in Leeds' wool and textile industry in the past. 

One of the owls from the Leeds Owl Trail. Not really sure what it's all about, but I intend to find out at some point. 

Taking selfies with giant chess pieces is hard.

United Kingdom YAGMs eating carrots. Photo Credit to Paul Webster, who obviously found this entertaining 😊.

This morning we packed up our stuff, had a closing worship and some closing activities, took some group photos, and headed back to the train station in Headingley. We then parted ways at the Leeds train station, Izzy and Allison and I got on the train back to the Manchester Picadilly station, and then Allison and I wandered around Manchester for a bit before she had to catch her train back to Wolverhampton, and then I had a late lunch at Subway, and caught the bus back to Longsight. And now I am at home with my nuns, who I missed over the last few days. I've gotten used to having them around. So yeah, this was a long blog post, but I think it was worth it. It was great to see some of the other U.K. YAGMs again, and ALL of the U.K. YAGMs will be reunited in October 😊, at which point I will probably be 907, but we'll see what Allison comes up with 😊.