grateful fear

I spent my first day off from studying in four weeks sprucing up my living room. My wonderful Mom helped me build some shelves (she did it I was too busy having a mental breakdown) last Tuesday. Today I filled them with books and pictures and momentos from my journeying. I have a travel shelf with my little Belarusian village house and magic doll (a gift from a developmentally disabled woman, it supposed to keep the evil eye from looking my way), travel guides, essays and such. I have a shelf with all my books on doctoring (not textbooks, memoirs, stories, fiction,etc) and some med school friends pictures. Another self devoted to college pictures. On the bottom shelves I put children’s books and various toys and things that I have accumulated so that my roomate’s nephew who spends at least one night every other week with us will have full access. to the toys and books  even if I am not around when he comes.  As a result of moving books and pictures out of my room, I finally have desk space and got rid of the random piles of crap that used to live on my dresser.

I also got some pictures framed. Ariana (my best friend from childhood) and her husband Jimmy are professional photographers these days. They sent me three beautiful photographs printed on really cool shiny, metallic paper and already matted for Chris. All I had to do was provide the frames. The finished product of shelves and pictures was lovely. I feel for the first time settled in my own home.

I am actually sitting on my sofa (people will have to make out elsewhere tonight) rather than holed up in my room. Its liberating. I feel a little ridiculous I can’t believe I let it get this crazy.  I should never be afraid of my own living room. I should never hate my life like I have for the last while.  I whine and complain but in reality I have not done much to help myself of late.  I think I left my self advocacy in a box waiting in my closet next to my travel guides. It was safer there tucked away where it couldn’t get me in trouble.

Similarly I have let stuff pile and fester without thinking to the point I have beaome so overwhelmed that I just want to purge everything that is overwhelming me so I don’t have to deal with it.And even the smallest addition to the piles makes me want to do this. And of course the mess is NOT MY FAULT, I am great at blaming and justifying my lack of action. Not healthy or helpful.

So today I reorganized. Today I hung some pictures and finally unpacked the last box from college. And I pondered.

and I decided that I was going to blog on my sofa tonight just for starters.

Make Out Manners 2 and Misc

Thanks to all the comments on Make Out Manners. I have never had so many comments on my blog. I suppose I know what everyone wants to talk about it So far there has not been a repeat of the situation but I am pondering confronting my roommate sometime before the weekend because I have company coming in the form of missing teacup (My Friend and yours Rachel).

In other news, Go see Kite Runner its awesome. I cried, my Dad cried, we all cried. I also have a new job. I am now co-facilitating an online group for teens with SED/Kniest. Current conversation varies from cervical fusion to High School Musial 2…fun times.

a Stream of Consciousness

“The non-disabled world tells disabled people generally that our lot is unavoidably tragic, and if we’re smiling, we’re smiling through tears and despite suffering. In the face of those powerful social forces, I believe that lving our strange and different lives, however we choose and manage to live them, is a contribution to the struggle [for equality]. Living our lives openly and without shame is a revolutionary act.”
Harriet McBryde Johonson
…a hardcore crip
I just finished Too Late To Die Young by Harriet McBryde Johnson. Absolutely brillant. Especially the last three or four chapters. It made me want to go become an activist almost as much as the movie AMAZING GRACE (go see it). (Brit be proud). Unspeakable Conversations still gives me goosebumps even on my second or third read of course. I will never forgive myself for admiring some of Peter Singer’s work considering his other works. Alas Johnson struggles as well.
I couldn’t help though to think about Laura (Romanian friend who died 2 years ago) as I read the book. Harriet and Laura have a lot in common. Harriet and Laura refused to subscribe to their culture conception of disability and to people’s expectations of what they could and couldn’t do. They are both writers and activists. And yes they both have nueromuscular diseases. The differences are stark however. Where Harriet succeded in getting an education and living life on her own terms. Laura was denied an education partly out of sheer predjudice and partly because her country was falling down all around her. Where Harriet refused to believe the statistics and lived life despite of diagnosis. Laura was haunted by hers to the point that in the months proceding her death she was having panic attacks not out of fear of death itself but on running out of time for life and her work. Laura died young begging for more time to help her people and live life, Harriet lives on. Harriet is what I think Laura would have been if she had been born in a first world nation or even in Romania but not in the mist of a Ceaceseau’s reign of terror.

Ironically we spent most of today learning about neuromusclar diseases. It was hard. As I read through Robbins Pathology section on Muscular Dystropy I was suprised by what came to my mind: “So what?” As I looked down at the little colorful blobs of protein and chemicals I was struck by how little it mattered to me. I was a little terrified how little it mattered to me. Because those blobs are supposed to mean something to me, they are supposed to be worth learning about.
I spent a good protion of my journals in Romania whining about what was wrong with people’s perceptions of illness and disability. I was so sick of being told there would be a mansion in heaven for my people and an institution for them here on earth. It didn’t cut it for me for them to bear their crosses. It was that furious summer of futile theological debate that cemented my desire to go to medical school. My preaching did very little where my assisting thearpists and doctors at least gave people something soild. It is very hard to preach liberation when no one can decide what the heck that means.
Not that I didn’t try to figure it out, I spent a year and half writing about liberation theology and all that debate. 86 pages later, I got a dorky award and a handful of medical school acceptence letters. I was tired of debating. I put my theology books in boxes and left them in another state under my bed next to my box of My Little Ponies from the 80s.
Now as I sit and look at Robbins Pathology, I articulate what has been coming for years. Medicine isn’t going to cut it for me. Its not that I don’t want to be a physicain. Its not even that I don’t want to be in medical school, I can’t just do medical school. I can’t just be a doctor. I can’t subscribe to some sort of theory of physical wholeness or lack of wholeness as the bottom line. A world of nothing but science isn’t the world I live in. I can try to pretend but it silly, its like my life is a play…Look this is Amy as medical student, isn’t that interesting?
I think I want to take some time off from the medical world. Don’t worry i am not going to do anything rash. But I do think I am going to take a year after 2nd year and go get my Masters in either International Development or Ministry. I also think I might go to Scotland or England to do it. If I stay in the US, I am not staying the Southeast.

by some crazy twist , my parents approve.

The End.

BOOKWORMS UNITE

My roomies and I had one of those amazing bookish conversations where we were pulling stuff off our shelves and exclaiming things like oh “I LOVE CS Lewis or Handmaiden’s Tale is a book every woman should read or oh my gosh The Red Tent will change your life or Every Christian should read Poisionwood Bible!!”

Here our book lists:

Karen:

scifi/fantasy: jurassic park, sphere, ender’s game (series), hobbit, timeline (…i guess i like michael crichton sci fi stuff :-P)

plays: hamlet, othello, importance of being earnest, glass menagerie

nonfiction/memoirs: angela’s ashes

fiction: time traveler’s wife, cask of amontillado, 1984,

Christian: who needs a superhero, screwtape letters, too busy not to pray

stuff i’ve been meaning to read: devil in the windy city, lovely bones, dante club, rule of four, deception point
Raena:

Christian
Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller
The Case For Faith - Lee Strobel

Christian Fiction
Pretense - Lori Wick
The Scarlet Thread - Francine Rivers

Romantic Fiction
A Walk to Remember - Nicholas Sparks
Confessions of a Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella

Children’s Fiction
Jacob Have I Loved - Katherine Paterson
Travel Far, Pay No Fare - Anne Lindbergh
Harry Potter - J.R. Rowling
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles - Patricia C. Wrede

Classics
Persuasion - Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

Fiction
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Plot Against America - Philip Roth (I’m reading this now)

Non-Fiction
Kaffir Boy - Mark Mathabane
A Hope In the Unseen - Ron Suskind
A People’s History of the United States - Howard Zinn

AMY:

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglass Adams

Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Triology

Lord of the Rings

Eyre Affair Series!!!

Harry Potter

Historical Fiction

Phillipa Gregory’s Books especially The Queen’s Fool

Phyllis Wheatly’s Daughter of the Stars

The Red Tent!!!!!! (every Jewish and Christian woman should read this book)

Classics

Farewell to Arms-Ernest Hemingway

A Prayer for Owen Meany-John Irving
A Brave New World-A. Huxley

1984 and Animal Farm-George Orwell

Modern Fiction:

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Piccoult

Poisonwood Bible

Plays 

MacBeth (yes get over it I like it)

12th Night

W;t

The Crucible by Arthur Miler (again get over it)

Proof

Religious Non-fiction THAT EVERYONE SHOULD READ:

Abaraham-by Bruce Feiler (if every Jew, Christian and Muslim read this book the world might be a slightly more peaceful place)

Nine Parts of Desire-by Geraldine Brooks-amazing memoir by an American woman who lived in Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and befriended Muslim women-read it!!!!!!

Christian Books:

CS Lewis’ entire library

Blue Like Jazz by Don Miller-amazing read it

My Utmost for Highest-Oswald Chambers

Girl Meets God-by Lauren Winner-AMAZING

Let Your Life Speak

Linage of Grace (Women in Jesus’ Lineage) Novella series-Francine Rivers

Children’s Books:

The Giver-Lois Lowery

Dr. Seuss in general

The Giving Tree

The Crippled Lamb by Max Lucado

Ann Rinaladi books

Books I Have to READ:

The Handmaiden’s Tale  (yes I know I am horrible for not reading it yet)

Kite Runner

The Time Traveler’s Wife

Too Late to Die Young

The Great Divorce

Confessions of St. Augustine

and like a million more but this is just what I could think of off the top of my head
comment and add essential books to our list!!!!