body in rebellion

my body is sounding its rebel yell. last night i was up from 3:30 to 5 hacking up a lung, tossing & turning (i seem to have caught the whooping cough from Liz across time & space). i think my immune system is just freaking out, really. i'd been trying to exercise every day between arriving home & moving to Atlanta, and yesterday i had to admit defeat. i missed my last chance at cardio funk. that's serious business. and i've been so tired--this week, nearly every night, i've slept almost twice as long as i did on a normal youthworks night.

and that frightening fact, my friends, is what caused the following realization to dawn on me: my body has every right to go haywire on me as i've been trying to shift it back to normalcy after a youthworks summer. for those of you who don't know, being on staff with youthworks caused the following to happen to my body:

• no (intentional) exercise. not only is exercise, obviously, a way to stay in shape, but it is my primary form of stress release. i had an outlet for neither on our schedule.
• not only was i unable to relieve my stress through exercise, but instead i began eating my way through it. and it wasn't just stress--i ate my feelings. tired? have a 11pm bowl of cereal. frustrated? here's a peanut butter & honey tortilla wrap. angry? poptart. sad? bag of Doritos. impatient? animal crackers. you get the idea...
• Martelle's, the Johnsons, David & Anita, and Beck's (good enough to slap your grandma, but way too many calories)--all the local favorites kept us saturated in grease & sweets.
  
• i think i've established that a lot of junk was going in (4 pounds worth, as it turns out. grr) but there wasn't a whole lot of good stuff mixed in there with it. we had salad out every day--but it was iceberg lettuce aka water in leaf form. occasional fruit & fresh veggies (Sunday afternoons were our salvation), but not as much as I usually eat. just a general lack of variety in diet.
• Hyde County water. affectionately referred to as "poison" or "cancer water." we purchased a well of salvation (that is, a Brita filter) but couldn't drink from it 100% of the time.
  
• we. didn't. sleep. we had to push & push & push our bodies far beyond what they'd normally endure, and as everything inside us called out for rest, we had 6 more hours to go before the day was over. "tired" headaches became a common occurrence--a literal pull behind the eyes, the brain trying to shut them, which had to be ignored& thus developed into a headache.
  
• inhalation of bleach fumes.
  

it really should come as no surprise, thus, that i'm currently in such a state of disarray. i've had over a week of rest & recuperation (which is a good deal more than at least one of my teammates) but i feel like it's all just beginning to hit me--not good for the big move tomorrow. i want to be 100% myself as i dive into this new life, this new adventure.

another after-effect of the summer: continued numbness. right now, all my possessions are packed into my little Focus & ready to drive off down I-85 tomorrow morning, where 4 hours hence everything will be unloaded into my new house. my amazing new house. where i will be living this year. and attending seminary. i'm excited--i am. but not enough. the same thing happened at the end of the YouthWorks summer--it kept drawing nearer & nearer until finally it was the last week, then the last full day, then we were saying goodbyes at 5am next to airport shuttles, and it still wasn't real. i still don't think i really have gotten that the summer is over, that YouthWorks is over. i mean, i get that--i'm sitting here in Charlotte, not Hyde County, on a couch, not a classroom floor. but i haven't felt it. the first half of the summer, i kept wondering how it would feel--how sad or bittersweet it would be--to drive out of Hyde County for the last time. then when that day finally came, it just happened. we just drove away & that was that. and now, i'm about to move to Atlanta and earlier this spring I was bouncing up & down with anticipation. i know, i KNOW that is all buried down inside me, because I am thrilled to be attending seminary, but i still just can't feel. being on staff at YouthWorks requires you to repress so much--you're "on" all day long. so no matter how angry or upset or frustrated or elated you are about one thing or another, you've got to keep going. so you push it all down. you swallow your feelings (often times washed down with an oreo or poptart, as mentioned above) and plan to deal with them later. but it never relents, there's never time or space to deal with it. so we became numb.

there was a point during the summer when the staff was very seriously considering following through on our pact to get tattoos. okay, so it didn't happen (lame, i know--but i'm still up for it if anyone's in!) but at one point i turned to katy & commented that getting that tattoo would hurt--and that would be a feeling that couldn't be pushed down or ignored or swallowed for later. i wanted that pain, that hurt just so i could feel.

i know eventually everything is going to hit like a tidal wave. all the emotions & feelings are going to well up until they burst out in a "david after dentist"-esque scream of pain & release & confusion.

clearly, just like my body is rebelling, my emotions are going to be a bit scarred for awhile, too. i want to feel all the joy & anticipation & awkwardness of this new Atlanta/Emory/seminary/big grown-up adventure instead of just wading through--wanting to experience everything in its fullness but not being all there.

i think it's going to start when i get on my face before God. i know everything i experienced in His ministry this summer is stored up inside me somewhere--and i just can't tap into it yet. i want to so badly. SO MUCH happened and i want to feel the rush of it, the overwhelming presence of God in & above & around & through what i just went through with YouthWorks. i'm still waiting on that. that's a tidal wave i'm ready to get lost in.

i'm ready, God. open me up again.