Day 84: Livin' on a Prayer

I don't remember where, when, how, or on what I did the math, but two Fridays ago was the halfway point. From this moment forth, I'm on the tail-end of my trip. I'm leaving the woods. I don't have to collect all those KONG tokens again if I lose another life. And honestly? I don't think I could've guessed where I'd be at this point.

Going into this, I thought I'd have it down by now. Heck, by June I was hitting a pretty good rythm, a tango of seeing folks in the lab, heading out for trips, and getting my "me" time on the computer. My diet was gaining enough variety to be sustainable for the next three months, my spending was modest, I'd already gotten some sweet ideas for souvenirs for my folks back home (hint: it's not socks), and life was just peachy. Sure, it was hard, being far from home, but I barely felt a thing.

And that's when July rolled around. It started in June (as July often does) with the infamous peanut sauce incident, which set me in bed for a good day or two and gave my system a thorough beating. That was the first warning shot. The real blow struck just before the fourth, when those often talked about traveler's stomach problems came to roost. Two days later, I was still eating dry toast and rice, and my ear was starting to feel full. A week later it was nearly completely blocked, I'd lost eleven pounds, and I was starting to get these odd bouts of dizziness. Every time a minor problem went away, a new one hopped in to take its place. I spent my birthday huddled in my room, trying to get some rest, and hoping I'd get better soon. And let me tell you, when you're in a foreign country, even small health problems can get scary.

I admit I spent far too much time alone and on WebMD than could be healthy, and I fell into the hands of my old enemy, anxiety. For weeks I suffered in his grasp, and he dealt me all manner of aches and pains which I immediately chalked up to one of seven different kinds of plagues, all of which would surely be fatal. I spent my days switching between distracting myself from worrying, convincing myself I had nothing to worry about, and trying to claw out of a bad bout of worrying. Every time anything improved, my mood, my health, my recipe for Gyoudon, I'd hold out the hope that it was all over, and that I'd surely learned whatever lesson God wanted me to learn from all this. Only to wake up the next day and find my problems right where I'd left them.

This would be the part of the story where something incredible, yet seemingly mundane happens, teaches me to get a new outlook on life, and I spend my last two months in Japan a happy man. This story's not so clean as to have one of those. What happened was really a combination of things. God finally got it through to my skull that if he's powerful enough to create existence as we know it, then he's more than capable of keeping an eye on me and my health "problems". My mom (and bless her patience with me) finally got it through to my skull that my health problems weren't to be worried about, and that hospitals are capable of fixing people no matter where you are. And I finally got it through to my skull that I was sick of living like a man on death's door. Because if I was, then death's door was taking its sweet time closing. My life started to get back in order, now with a lot less stress than before, and a much greater appreciation for God's daily provision. Turns out he's got you covered whether you wake up feeling like you could barf or if you wake up ready to punch the day right in its smug face.

Well I can still feel the stiffness in my neck as I write this, and if I sit too close to the screen, my head will start feeling funny again, and I can't say that I've been 100% worry-free, so I can't call myself all well and good. But I can call myself good enough to see Japan, talk with Him, eat food of all kinds, play games (provided my eyes get a nice break now and then), go for bike rides, take chances, make mistakes, get messy, and above all, live.

And I think that's more than enough to get me through these next eight weeks.

Happy Halfway, everybody. And at least one more.

PS: If you're wondering about some of the events I mentioned above (such as the infamous peanut sauce incident), don't worry, they'll be covered later. In fact, if there's anything you might want to hear more about, leave a note in the comments.