I got sick back in Glasgow, VA, with what I thought was food poisoning. My standards for what I will put in my body has dropped way too low! Since Adam didn't get sick (we thought it was because he was smart enough not to eat what I had eaten), I did not think it was Noro-virus. Unfortunately, a week later, Adam got sick as well, so now we've spent two, and will be spending one more, days in Waynsboro, VA, right before Shenandoah National Park (the last 100 miles of Virginia!). Most hikers get Noro-virus once while on the trail. It's really just a one-to-two day stomach bug, but it's still no fun! We spent all of yesterday laying in bed (although I'm not still sick, I really haven't felt 100% since I got sick last week, so I didn't complain!).
I've been a bit paranoid that my No Changes Necessary post would alienate some of my friends. I don't actually know how many of my friends read this blog, so maybe I have no need to worry. I have always had an insane desire to please, which I now believe is rooted in a fear of rejection. Not that I've ever really felt truly rejected - I have always felt completely safe and loved by my family. Theoretically, I assumed that if you have loving and nurturing parents, you wouldn't worry about rejection, but that is not the case. All growing up, I was extremely shy. Pre-Jr. High only had a few friends, and I would always feel rejected if they didn't want to hang out with me. In High School I had lots of friends, but I was only close to a few, and the rest I failed to make an effort to grow closer to based out of my fear that they wouldn't find me interesting or like me.
I am not sure what it was about me that made my few close friends growing up to become such good friends. I am not sure why Sarah and Michelle approached me back when we were so young, because there is no way I approached them, as shy as I was! Looking back, I am so thankful for their friendships! It amazes me that these two beautiful, outgoing, joyous girls have stuck by me all these years. Thank you. As for my relationships with guys, I have never been dumped because I would never allow myself to be interested in any guys that didn't show a complete interest in me.
All my years, I have been so concerned with self-preservation that I would act in whatever way I thought my friends wanted me to act. Even now, I'm pretty sure that most of my pre-college friends don't realize what a nut I am! When I got to college, I found out that I barely knew who I was. I'm always reminded of the scene in the movie Runaway Bride when Julia Roberts realizes that she doesn't know how she likes her eggs prepared because she would always order them however her man at the time would order them. As silly as that sounds, that was totally me.
In college, I finally felt free to discover who I was, and I found out that I actually do have a lot of opinions! And most of them are considered kind of radical. As seen in No Changes Necessary, I'm convicted about how I change my appearance - realizing that, for myself, there is a tension between my desire to look beautiful and my desire to be wholeheartedly devoted to God. I try not to eat meat at restaurants or buy it in the store because of how inhumanely those animals (God's creation) are treated. I try not to buy clothes at department stores because of how inhumanely the factory workers are treated in third-world countries (it gets hard to stomach seeing "Made in Cambodia" tags once you actually meet and talk with some of these Cambodian women stuck in these horrible jobs with little pay, no job security, forced overtime, inhumane conditions, and unlikely to ever see their families again). Same with most foods - harvested in Mexico, Guatemala, Indonesia, Nicaragua, even the US, etc. We gave away our car when we left for the trail because we're convicted about using it - the oil wars, the pollution, and even being alienated from other people in everyone's separate cars. I support raising the minimum wage, especially after realizing that most people working at minimum wage are not actually teenagers! They're middle age men and women (who I worked alongside while at Target for the past 1.5 years) who could not afford higher education and are stuck working for $8 an hour trying to support their families, which means they must rely on welfare to feed their families, even though they're working 35-40 hours a week (or more, since many of them have to have two jobs). And yes, I voted for the Green Party candidate in the last elections (not that I affiliate myself with or support everything they stand for, but I don't particularly care for any political party).
I know I have a lot of convictions that many of my friends don't share, and that's okay. If I were to only be friends with people who thought the same as me, I would really be missing out. I love it that my friends have opinions that are different from my own, and I think it says a lot about how good these friendships are - way more important and stronger than our political views. And yes, although Michelle might be a republican and Sarah might not support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, we still all support each other, and that is the true meaning of sisterly-love.
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