Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Reborn From the Ashes

How many thoughts do we have in a day? Have you ever wondered about this? According to the Laboratory of Neruo Imaging from USC, humans on average have 70,000 thoughts per day. I would love to know how many of my thoughts each day have to do with the "pressures" or expectations I feel the world pushes on me. I would guess...a lot of them! We all feel the need to be accepted and we seek to belong. We look at others and sort them. We find correlations and we make summations from this. All the popular kids wear blue shoes, I will wear blue shoes, thus I will be popular. Due to this we do certain things that we believe will influence others to accept us. Some things that are pretty ridiculous...I could tell you some stories about middle school. Yikes! ;) 
Sometimes no matter what we do we feel that the world has turned its back on us. We are left alone and yet everyone's eyes are on us. Hostile gossip and side ways glances.  Some have crumbled under the pressure of life, but others have risen. Very simliarly to Fawkes the Phoenix, they rise from their own bitter ashes a stronger being. 

“Fawkes is a phoenix, Harry. Phoenixes burst into flame when it is time for them to die and are reborn from the ashes.”
― J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
This is my friend Sauda. She is one of the many people I worked with in Uganda this summer. She was faced with a struggle that could have crippled. Instead she has risen from the ashes! 


I would like to take you back several months ago. The setting is Mbale, Uganda on the east side of Middle Africa. Mbale is large and yet has the small town feel. Everyone knows everyone. You walk down the street, vendors are yelling and gossiping at the same time. Those that do not have jobs, just walk around town. Our hero, Sauda, is in a long term relationship. She is happy and healthy! Then she determines that she is pregnant. She tells her boyfriend the happy news and unfortunately he is not thrilled. He demands that she abort the baby, she refuses, and he quickly removes himself from the situation. He left...left her alone to deal with this pregnancy. Sauda found herself alone in a sea of people. I am sure that she felt the side ways glances and the gossip swirling around her. I never asked her how her confidence was affected by this, but I would imagine that she felt about 2 inches tall. The world did its best to push her down and yet she rose. She rose from the ashes of her old self and into a new beautiful being. Sauda made a decision. She wanted this baby. She also wanted to do more in life. She started a group to support women who have a fistula. I have come to find that no one in America knows what this is, unless they have taken Women's Health. A fistula is a rip that develops between organs. There are a few different types, but the most common occurs during an obstructed labor. It can occur between the vagina and the anus and is caused by complication during child birth. If the child is not positioned properly and the labor becomes constricted without proper medical attention, the women can develop a tear as the child is birthed. This is very rare in America, since most people have access health care professionals. However, in Uganda, this is not the case. Most people do not give birth with a doctor, they just give birth at home. If the labor becomes obstructed they may not be able to get to a medical professional in time. The child has a very high risk of death during an obstructed labor. 

Not only is this extremely painful, but it also carries societal repercussions. Many villagers still believe that fistulas are punishments from God or due to witch craft. The woman is shunned from the community. She is left to live alone with her condition. Some create communities in the jungle with others who suffer from fistulas. 
(This is a meeting of the fistula team...me, Katie, Sauda, Cristina holding Zam's new born, and Zam.)

Sauda helps to find these women and he them to raise money for the surgery that they need. It is a pretty easy surgery and fairly cheap due to the funding the government has provided. There is a hospital in Kampala that specifically treats fistulas. The woman has to pay for travel to Kampala, food while you are there, and the bed sheet for surgery. Sauda helps them to raise money for these fees. She also works to educate people about the true causes of fistulas. She explains the common misconceptions and how to prevent fistulas. All this while, she is pregnant and probably hoping that everything will go alright when she delivers.  She has chosen to help others even while she is dealing with her own struggles. 

I wish that I could guarantee smooth sailing in life, but unfortunately I can't. In fact I can pretty much guarantee that rough times will come, but you have the ability to rise. Rise from the ashes!

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Happily ever after, where are you?????

Today I woke up and remembered that I have a blog. Not only do I have one, but I love it. I have neglected you for too long! Forgive me, please! To make it up to you I am starting a new and exciting chapter... guest posts! I have so many wonderful people in my life and I want to hear from them. This way you don't have to listen to me all day everyday. So without further pomp I would like to introduce my first guest, Melanie Newton Davis. Melanie enjoys long walks on the beach, watching movies, and eating mac and cheese. The most important and defining fact about Melanie is that she is my sister. Hahaha just kidding! But due to our blood relationship, I have had a great opportunity to get to know her and really see her live life. She has had some really normal experiences in life. Normal, but hard. Anyway, here she is discussing happily ever after! 


Once upon a time …

From the opening words we all know exactly how the story will end:  And they lived happily ever after.

We may not all believe we are going to live happily ever after like the prince and princess but it doesn’t take long for each of us to have very set expectations for how our life will turn out.  Whether it be that we plan to be a famous actor, a brilliant surgeon, a world traveler, or for me it was simply to be a wife and a mother.  Now that may seem to be a silly school girl dream and a little old fashioned but that was my expectation for life.  I would graduate high school, go to college at BYU and in no time I would be a married woman and then I would be set, I would live happily ever after.

The first real shift in my very realistic expectations for life came when my first sibling got married and a few months later they were home for the holidays and I got the shock of my life they disagreed with each other—I couldn’t believe. I was shocked that that could happen in my world of happily ever afters.

Now of course a simple disagreement did not mean that there was anything wrong between my sister and her husband—they were simply like any other two people—they disagreed on things here and there.  As life went on and no catastrophes happened, I continued to believe marriage meant happily ever, as I watched my other sister and my older brother get married and I had never seen them happier than on their wedding days.

And I thought I was well on my way to my happily ever after as I went through my first couple of years of college by having two boyfriends and quite a few dates in between.  Then in my second to last year of college I thought I was really ready for my Cinderella moment and it looked like I would get it.  I began dating a young man and it looked we were headed straight to matrimony.  But then my expectations blew right out the window because instead of proposing he dumped me.  I thought my life plans were over.

I had only one year left in college and if I didn’t get married while in college all my plans would be over and who knows what would happen.  Well I don’t know if you can see where this is going but I didn’t get married while I was in college.  But the best thing that ever happened was the day my plans fell flat right around me.  See I had been living my entire life around my plans and expectations for life and I wasn’t living life to the fullest.

I was letting what I thought should happen in life stop me from taking the chances that came along that let life be anything and everything it could be.  As I stopped trying to plan my perfect happily ever after and just enjoy life.  I had possibly my best year in college with great classes, friends, fun, and then graduation.  

Next I went on a Europe trip with my very best friend and saw some of the most amazing wonders of the world with the perfect company.  Finally I stepped out into the big bright world with absolutely no idea what was going to happen or what I was going to do.


And I ended up in one of the last places I would have ever expected: Oklahoma.  I still didn’t have a real job or plan but I helped my sister look after her kids for a few months and you will never believe what happened—within a year and a half I had a real corporate job with a salary and benefits and had met, dated, and married the most amazing man I had ever met.  But even that momentous occasion didn’t come how I had always thought it would.  It was even better.


Now I am not saying that planning and trying to achieve certain things are a bad thing but far too often we allow our expectations to be the law that governs our lives and miss out on some of the most amazing experiences simply because we didn’t expect them to come around.

Let us plan and try to live our lives well but may I suggest that all our plans be made in very light pencil so that when opportunities arrive that may alter our course we don’t have to tear up our life’s script and give up to fit them in but merely erase a few lives and make an easy revision allowing us the best of both worlds.  The brains to keep our lives in order but the wisdom enough to recognize that we can’t expect everything but can enjoy just about anything.