My Reflections playlist - Part 3 (1997-1999)

This part of the playlist only spans for two years, but they were pretty significant years in my life - 10th grade in the U.S. being homeschooled because my compassionate parents agreed not to force me to attend a public high school; and 11th grade back in Nigeria, the first half of which I lived without my parents and four+ months of which I lived in a dorm.

22. "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" by Andrew Lloyd Weber & Emmy Rossum - My mom's college friend took us to New York City in July 1997, when I was 15, and we got to see The Phantom of the Opera. I became obsessed with the musical and listened to the highlights CD (all I had at the time) probably several hundred times over the next year. I'm not sure why, but this was my favorite song from the show.

23. "Hold Me Jesus" by Rich Mullins - I hadn't heard much Rich Mullins music before this. We'd sung the chorus of "Awesome God" in chapel, but I had no idea it was a longer song, nor that it was by Rich Mullins. Then in the fall of 1997, he was killed in a car accident, and suddenly I discovered his music, a treasure trove. This song in particular brought solace during this year of what I considered forced exile from my friends in Nigeria. 

24. "Hymn to the Sea" by James Horner - I went to see Titanic not once, not twice, but three times when it came out. (I have since done this with other films, but at the time, it was considered ridiculous. I don't care.) I love love love this film. It makes me ugly cry every time, and this song rips my heart out of my chest whenever I hear it. Every.Single.Time. Sometimes when I've been in a melancholy mood but haven't been able to cry (this actually happens quite often), I've put on this film just so I can have a good cry. And no, I was not in love with Leo. I just loved the film and its music.

25. "The Message" by 4Him - During this year in the U.S., one of the things that gave me solace was Christian contemporary music. I didn't have much to spend babysitting money on, so I bought lots of CDs. One of my favorite groups was 4Him, and I loved this guy's voice in particular because it was right in my range. I'm not sure exactly why, but this album reminds me of happy times hanging out with a guy who lived next-door for about 6 weeks and made life tolerable at the time.

26. "Star Trek: Voyager - Main Title" by Jerry Goldsmith - While I had discovered Star Trek: Voyager during our furlough in 1994 during its first season and had started watching it any way I could when we went back to Nigeria, this was the first time I could watch it live on UPN each week. We had a rabbit-ear antenna, so the picture wasn't fantastic, but Jonathan and I watched it religiously when it aired and enjoyed reruns when it didn't. Although TNG will always be my first love, VOY is my true favorite.

27. "Right Here Waiting" by Richard Marx - This song says it all. "Oceans apart day after day..." This was my theme song during that 10th grade year. I missed my friends desperately.

28.  "And Still" by Reba McEntire - Finally, the summer of '98, I returned to Nigeria. My parents were originally going to join me after a few weeks, but life happened, and I ended up being there without them for seven months. For the first two months, I lived with my best friend's family, who are from Georgia/Louisiana, and I was introduced to country music. We listened to  a lot of country music that summer, but this was definitely my favorite. So wistful and sad. I've sung it to myself dozens of times over the years since. Oh, the angst! (Just watched the music video for the first time ever, and it's a weird one. I'm not sure how the visit to a developing country fits into my idea of the song...)

29. "The Hairbrush Song" by VeggieTales - Another thing I discovered when I returned to Nigeria was VeggieTales. My friends loved it, and we would watch it at sleepovers, just laughing uproariously as we were pumped on on sugar and caffeine. Larryboy was our hero.

30. "Johnny's Camaro" by David Wilcox - I first heard this song in January '97 when it was pretty new, but I associate it with later in high school for some reason. I wanted to be Laura in this song. Somehow it made me feel strong and powerful as a teenage girl growing up in Africa. (While this is fine in Spotify, this YouTube link to a live performance is way better.)

31. "No Need to Argue" by The Cranberries - One thing about having been gone for a year in the middle of high school was that my friendships shifted significantly in by absence. Who knows what happened or why things changed? All I knew was that one of my best friends had changed and would continue to change, taking her farther away from me. 

32. "Common Ground" by Sierra - I listened to this song over and over again, and I even played it for my friend who was drifting away. It didn't help and perhaps pushed her farther away. I didn't understand why, but as a result, this song represents my junior year of high school.

33. "Johnny's Soliloquy" by Harve Presnell - Twenty-plus years later, this song still pulls at my heartstrings. My junior year of high school, we performed The Unsinkable Molly Brown. I had a teeny tiny part, but I still got to be at all the rehearsals. And the guy who played the lead role of Johnny was just outstanding. It's a heart-wrenching song but brings back a flood of memories.

That gets us through 11th grade. My senior year was very full and has lots of songs, so I'm saving a separate post for that year.

My Reflections playlist - Part 2 (1991-1997)

This part covers our first two terms in Nigeria and the year of furlough in between them. 

12. "We Will Rock You" by Queen - This song is at the end of the film Mighty Ducks, which was shown at a movie night at our school in Nigeria. I don't remember watching the film on the big screen, but I do remember this song and our response to it. I'd never heard of Queen (and didn't actually know this was sung by Queen until I was in my early 30s), but this song was so catchy. We loved stomping our feet and clapping but had no idea what any of the words were except "We will, we will rock you." 

13. "End of the Road" by Boyz II Men - I don't honestly think I'd ever listened to this whole song before putting together this playlist. I'm not a fan at all. Not even a little. But the chorus of this song takes me back to the day my friend Ruth drove away for the last time. It was 1993, and she'd been my neighbor and one of my best friends for the two years we'd lived in Nigeria. Her family was moving to Ethiopia, so who knew when we'd see each other again, if ever. So as Ruth and her family drove out the compound gates of Niger Creek (to drive the five hours to the airport city), my friend Meaghan and I ran after the van, singing "We've come to the end of the road..." It felt like an ending. I had no way of knowing my family would stay in touch with Ruth's over the next few decades, and I'd even get to line dance at Ruth's wedding 11 years later.

14. "Cat's in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin - This was the first non-Sunday-school song that I memorized from start to finish. It was one of the songs on a family mixtape of '70s music that we called "the pop tape." I'm not sure why I decided to memorize it, aside from its being mellow and mentioning cats. But we were on a family vacation at a river down south, and I used a portable tape recorder to play the song over and over again until I learned all the words. (The next song on the tape was "Rocky Mountain High" by John Denver.)

15. "Hero" by Mariah Carey - We came back to the U.S. halfway through my sixth grade year due to a family medical emergency. I spent 1994 at a public middle school in L.A., and it was a pretty crummy year for the most part. But I got to be in Chorus as an elective, and this is one of the songs we sang. I'd never heard of Mariah Carey and didn't even know this was her song until years later, but I loved it right away.

16. "Star Trek: The Next Generation Main Title" by Jerry Goldsmith - During this year of furlough, we had cable TV for the first (and last) time ever. Before we moved to Nigeria, I'd been accustomed to PBS shows and cartoons. Now I could watch other things, like Get Smart on Nick at Nite. (Mom wouldn't let me watch Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie because they were about magic.) And I discovered Star Trek: The Next Generation and immediately fell in love with it. I have loved Star Trek ever since.

17. "I'll Be There" by The Escape Club - I heard this song sometime in seventh grade while I was in the U.S. I had exactly one true friend that year, Stephanie, and all the others were still in Nigeria. I missed them with every beat of my heart. I associate this song with being in Stephanie's house, so we must have listened to it on her radio, but the angst in the song made me incredibly homesick.

18. "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" by Bryan Adams - I fell in love with this song once I returned to Nigeria and was surrounded by my friends again (and had a crush on a cute guy). I didn't see the film associated with this song until I was in college, but the song was on the radio in Nigeria quite a lot.  

 19. "Another Day in Paradise" by Phil Collins - When I think of this song, I think of realizing my privilege for the first time. I was probably 12 or 13 when I started to understand how privileged I was. In the U.S., I always felt poor. Kids made fun of my second-hand clothes and stupid hair. But when we went back to Nigeria and I finally started looking outside of myself, I began to see my life in contrast to those around me. So this is my epiphany song.

20. "Main Title (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers)" by Adolph Deutsch - To be fair, I haven't seen this film since high school, and I have a feeling the sexism would make me crazy nowadays. But I included this song because when I was in eighth grade, I got to be in the orchestra when my school performed this musical, and my brother had the lead role of Adam. Even though I was only in middle school, I got to go to school in the evening for rehearsals with Jonathan, and I loved it. We had a wonderful time! 

21. "Forgiving Eyes" by Michael Card - Can I just say that I love that Michael Card wrote a song from the perspective of the "adulterous" woman from John 8? I'd been listening to Michael Card's The Life for years by this point, but for whatever reason, this song struck me in a new way in about ninth grade. This song tells of a Jesus of compassion and empathy, who loves and forgives. It is the Jesus I want to love. 

This takes us up through the end of ninth grade, when my brother graduated from high school and we left Nigeria to return to the U.S. for another year.

My Reflections playlist - Part 1 (1982-1991)

 My brother recently created a playlist that represented his life, and I loved the idea so much I had to make my own "mixtape." I only started today, so it's still in process, but it provided lots of food for thought. Diving into my past to identify specific songs opened a floodgate of memories--both the good and the bad. And floodgates of memories lead me to want to write, almost always. So I'm going to tell you what songs I put on my playlist and why. After I've gone through the whole playlist, I'll post the Spotify link, but until then, here are YouTube links.

1. "Sing" by The Carpenters - This is probably one of the first songs I ever heard, and I'm almost positive I heard it on vinyl. We had a record player when I was little, and in nursery school and Sunday school, we sometimes got little kid-sized records of church songs to sing. This song brings back happy memories of being a little kid and being surrounded by music and singing.
2. "He Will Not Let You Fall" by the Worship Community (formerly Maranatha Music) - This is a song on an album we had called Psalms Alive! It is literally psalms from the Bible put to upbeat music. I don't know any of the words to this song except the chorus, but it reminds me of being little.
3. "1974" by Amy Grant - My siblings and I grew up on Amy Grant's early albums, and while this isn't necessarily my favorite of her songs, it's the one that takes me back to first hearing Christian contemporary music. Even just the first few beats of the song sweep me away to our apartment in Los Angeles circa 1989.
4. "Luke and Leia" by John Williams - The first movie I remember watching is Return of the Jedi (aka Star Wars Episode VI). My brother had a little stuffed animal Ewok (Wicket), and I adored Leia's hair in the scene of this song. It was so long and wavy and perfect. I wanted hair like hers, but I wasn't good at brushing it, and my mom hacked it off. So little Sara lived vicariously through Leia in this scene and its song.
5. "Are You Goin' to Narnia" by the 2nd Chapter of Acts - One of our family favorite albums was Roar of Love by 2nd Chapter of Acts. It uses music to tell the story of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and I have loved it for as long as I can remember. I heard this album well before I read the book, so in some ways, this is more beloved.
6. "Gabriel's Oboe" by Ennio Morricone - I saw bits and pieces of this movie from the place just inside the hallway where my parents couldn't see me from the couch. I was probably 7 or 8. It wasn't long before I got to see the full movie, as it's one of our family favorites, and this song has haunted me ever since. It is why the oboe is my favorite wind instrument. 
7. "So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt" by Keith Green - Keith Green died just after I was born. We had a 2-disc album of his greatest hits, and this was my personal favorite because I found it hilarious. I mean, you can imagine how funny "ba-manna bread" was when I was little. I loved that the song was about the Bible but was also funny. 
8. "Love Crusade" by Michael W. Smith - Like my token Amy Grant song in these early years, this is not my favorite MWS song. But it's the first song for which I consciously made an effort to learn the lyrics. My older brother learned the rap part in the middle, so of course I also had to learn it. This wasn't the first MWS album I listened to, either, but I have very specific memories of learning this song in our L.A. apartment when the album was brand new in 1990.
9. "The Man from Snowy River Concert Suite" by Bruce Rowland - This is another of the earliest movies I remember watching and a family favorite. It was also my first exposure to Australia. Little did I know that we'd soon move into a house with Australian neighbors.
10. "African Sanctus: 1. African Sanctus" by David Fanshawe -I can't fully express how this song makes me feel. I guess in the context of this list, I consider it my introduction to the idea of moving to Nigeria. It's so much more, but that's all I can say for now.
11. "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by Peter, Paul, & Mary - Last but not least in this section, this song was our family theme in 1991 when we left the U.S. to make our home in Nigeria. (For the record, I know this is a John Denver song, but I didn't even hear his version until I was 17. I always associate this song with Peter, Paul, & Mary.) So OK, the whole song doesn't fit our situation at all, but we'd sing the chorus together. It was our song.

So that brings us to 1991 when we moved to Nigeria. I was nine years old.

What I didn't get to say

 Dear friend,

I read your name today and painfully remembered the last conversation we had. It was an exchange of text messages, and we were both hurting. I wanted you to understand, to not take his side, to back me up--but mostly to understand. I wanted you to see my pain and acknowledge it was legitimate. But you were hurt indirectly by my words against him. We were both so hurt, and instead of responding in a patient and loving manner, I avoided you. And within a couple of months, I'd moved away. We lost touch--mostly because I was so resentful--and I often wondered about you. Not enough to pick up my phone and send a text. Not enough to ask about you from the others I left behind. There was still that pain. 

And now that pain has turned to regret. If I had known that your days were so numbered, would I have reached out to you? Moved beyond my pain and asked your forgiveness? 

Our friendship was so short, and yet you brought me to life in a way I'd forgotten was possible. You made me laugh with your goofiness and got me through long days at work with wacky text messages. You were positive and made me feel likable at a time when I was struggling through recent divorce and raising two kids on my own. You were a deep thinker and made me examine my own thoughts and assumptions about life. You were a shoulder to lean on, with gentle hands to help untangle my yarn. I wish I had known you longer, known you sooner, before it all fell apart. I wish we could have been true friends. I wish we could have weathered the storm together instead of letting it tear us apart.

It's possible you never thought of me after we moved, after everything ended. You were social and surrounded by friends all the time, so maybe you didn't remember me. That would be OK. But I remembered you. And I wish I had taken the time to tell you I was sorry, to reach out again and enjoy your smile.

You believed your soul will live on with Jesus, so I'll hope that in some way you get a chance to see this. For whatever it's worth, I wanted to tell you I loved you, and that I'm sorry I didn't love you better. 

I miss you.

Saralynn

Hiding

Yesterday I didn’t say happy birthday to a friend on Facebook, even though their family was once very close to mine and I still love them like family. It’s not that I forgot to wish them a happy birthday; it’s that I was embarrassed. Why?

Because I’m divorced.

One of the hardest things about being divorced has been facing those I knew in my old evangelical life, all of whom I’ve disappointed by dissolving my marriage. If I took time to explain the emotional and psychological abuse, the gaslighting, they might—might—feel sorry for me and offer to pray for me. One or two might actually think the end of my marriage was the right thing (though still probably not "good"). But every one of them is disappointed. Even if I never see these people from my past ever again, or even hear from them, I know in my bones, and in the depths of my soul, that I have failed them. 

I was a “good” girl. I never drank or smoked. I saved myself for marriage, didn’t even kiss a boy ever until my wedding night. I did all the right things. And yet my marriage failed. Either I picked the wrong person and was foolish in following my heart, or I picked the right person but was foolish in letting it end. Either way, I failed. I’m a single mom, and I bear the unbelievably heavy weight of disappointment from everyone who’s ever loved me.

It’s heavy. So heavy. The shame is overwhelming. Never mind that half of marriages in the country end in divorce. Never mind that just as many of those divorces are of Christian couples. That doesn’t matter. In my evangelical upbringing, divorce is sinful, and a divorced person is someone to be pitied and avoided. And as an exvangelical, I am struggling against the weight and chains that bind me to this anguish of shame. I have left the Church but will need years to process now to break the chains.

And until then, I will continue to hide from the Christian men and women I respect, those who loved me when I was “good.” Interacting with them is just too painful. Even if we never speak of my marriage or divorce, I will feel their disappointment and slowly cave in upon myself while murmuring my mantra: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Hot yoga and sitting with your pain

I recently listened to Glennon Doyle’s book Love Warrior (which I highly recommend) and was struck by Doyle’s recollection of an experience she faced during her separation from her husband. She describes how one day, she accidentally found herself in a hot yoga class, expecting it to be a regular air-conditioned yoga class. Instead of joining the others in the stretches, she sat on her mat and let herself feel her pain. She had been distracting herself from it, keeping busy with her children and with writing, and this was the first time she sat and faced it. She chose to not run away.

And I realized how guilty I am and have often been of distracting myself from my pain. I’m a private person and prefer to grieve alone, and these days, I am hardly ever alone. But even when I do have time to myself—after the kids are in bed, for example—I do whatever is fun or engaging. It’s not even necessarily that I am currently in pain or grieving any recent loss, although right now I am. Sometimes the pain is years old and has just never been felt because I’ve pushed it away.

There are so many losses I have not let myself fully grieve, actually sitting with my pain. My favorite person in the world, my grandpa, passed away six years ago, and I foolishly missed my chance to say goodbye. I came home from his memorial service directly into a separation from my husband that led, several months later, to divorce.

When my husband left us, I didn’t have--make--time to grieve. I jumped right into the job search and taking care of my kids as a single mom.

A year later, another of my favorite people, my high school mentor, died after a five-year fight against ALS.

When my coworker Sarah died suddenly this past May during the birth of her beautiful baby girl, I actually sat in my pain. The people around me pushed me to feel the grief and made space to process the loss. I didn’t know Sarah half as well as I’d have liked, but she was so precious, and knowing how much the others around me were hurting actually validated my own pain. I wept for Sarah and those she left behind. And the act of weeping in itself was healing.

But grief doesn’t just come in the deaths of loved ones; it comes in transitions, in losses of ability, losses of fellowship, losses of stability. When a friendly coworker moved away to pursue graduate studies, I experienced loss that I never processed. Even in this, our most recent move, leaving people and a job I loved—and faculty who really got me—I experienced loss.

I used to consider myself a pessimist. Then I referred to myself as a realist. My psychology faculty last year let me know that realists aren’t on the spectrum of optimism to pessimism, that “realists” are actually pessimists. I’m still not entirely convinced, but in the consideration of the point, I’ve begun to classify myself as a reluctant optimist. Don’t get me wrong: I still get depressed about certain things, such as the state of our presidency and the plight of people in Syria. But in day-to-day things, I have forced myself to be positive, to hope for the best, to tell myself, “It will all work out somehow.” And I actually believe it. Maybe this is because of a family history of clinical depression. Maybe I’m just frightened that if I lower myself into my pain, I won’t be able to climb out again and will only sink deeper and deeper into darkness. Maybe. But whatever the reason, I make myself face forward probably more often than is healthy. I have no desire to wallow in despair for the things in my past I cannot change, but moving forward in a healthy way does require acknowledging and experiencing the pain.

Since Sarah’s death in May, I have lost two other people I liked and respected—a caring therapist who doubled as one of my Psychology faculty, and a mission-field “uncle” I’ve known since I was nine years old who doubled as one of my Family Medicine faculty. Both deaths were sudden, and my heart aches in their loss. So I will choose to make time this week—maybe even tonight—to sit with my pain, to let myself feel their loss. 

It will perhaps be my final act of love.

Cross-Country Cruisin 2019 - Day 4

Day 4: Idaho Falls, Idaho, to Red Lodge, Montana
Miles: 309
States: Idaho, Wyoming, Montana

Day 4: Yellowstone National Park (July 7)

Today, we went to Yellowstone! We drove to Montana from Idaho Falls. Took a few pictures of the Montana sign, and drove to Yellowstone.

Yellowstone isn’t like Zion. In Zion, you park, get in a shuttle, and you’re in Zion. The only way to get to things is the shuttle. In Yellowstone, you’re driving around and looking at things from your car. You can get out, though. We saw elk, bison, and rabbits. The first animal I saw was a bison. We took pictures of it. We then saw geysers. There were a bunch of them!!

The best thing was Old Faithful. We saw that after lunch, which was a very fancy bison burger at a very fancy restaurant(I was not made for a fancy restaurant). We went to the gift shop and got a few keychains and postcards. After that, we were heading toward the exit, which was about 100 miles from where we were. Luckily, we had a book to listen to called Cress.

Yellowstone Lake

After we finally got out of the park, we went towards the mountains, where there was a bunch of snow.

We were so high up!! We were 11,000 feet high.

It was amazing. It took us a while to get to our hotel. After we got there, we put our stuff down and went swimmin’.

Wyoming-Montana border on the Beartooth Hwy

Cross-Country Cruisin' 2019 - Day 3

Day 3: St. George, Utah, to Idaho Falls, Idaho
Miles: 514
States: Utah, Idaho

From Tim:

Day 3: Driving again (July 6)

Today, we were driving from St. George, UT, to Idaho Falls, ID. It was a long day. We drove for about seven hours. It took us nine hours total to actually get there. We watched Iron Man and Captain America: Winter Soldier. We also listened to my playlist on the way. It wasn’t a very active day.

Here’s a link to my playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6s42Lk4mjfKObJL57pFxZ7