Our first blog post of 2012! (And our first one, in like, a month, right?) To keep it relatively simple, here’s a generic 2011 recap survey:

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?

Matt – moved outside of the western suburbs of Chicago
Angel – taught English as a legit teacher

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Matt – Nope and nope. I don’t even remember them!
Angel – What he said.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Matt – What? I don’t think so. Um…
Angel – Yes! Two dear friends from our home church both had their first babies not too long ago. I’m so excited for them!

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Matt – Jen
Angel – Yes, 2011 was a sad year My aunt Jen passed away after a bone marrow transplant and a good friend from home passed away in a car accident. Both were so young. It’s still unbelievable to me.

5. What places did you visit? 

Matt – Arizona, LaPorte, Hong Kong, Beijing, Guangzhou
Angel – What he said

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

Matt – Amazing Mandarin skills
Angel –  What he said

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Matt – I’m not very good with dates, so this one is proving to be problematic.
Angel –  I’m also not good with dates, but Jen passed away Memorial Day weekend, and I will always remember that weekend as a terrible weekend, even if I don’t remember the dates. Matt and I were camping that weekend, and it literally rained the whole time, except for when were almost caught in a tornado at the campground while sitting in my car.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? 

Matt – Feeling good about finishing the semester
Angel –  The first time I took the bus by myself in Tianjin

9. What was your biggest failure?

Matt – Not being able to help my dad sell his business before I left
Angel –  Every time I went to the printer’s office at our school

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Matt – Nothing serious, but the whole trip up to Tianjin, I felt like I was going to die from food poisoning.
Angel – Just a bad cold during the week of my birthday

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Matt – Macbook
Angel – Projector

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Matt – My dad for selling his practice
Angel – My awesome husband for being amazing every day

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Matt – In the news in general, Anthony Weiner.
Angel – Call me a cultural snob/elitist, but Chinese people who are constantly spitting everywhere. I just can’t get used to that. I still flinch every time.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Matt – Health insurance
Angel – Health insurance

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Matt – Food
Angel –  Having a Western bathtub

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?

Matt – “You and I” by Ingrid Michaelson
Angel – a song I wrote earlier in the year after being laid off about things being difficult and depressing, but not giving up hope. It also came to my mind a lot during the week of Jen’s funeral.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder?

Matt – Happier
Angel – Happier

b) thinner or fatter? 

Matt – Thinner
Angel – I don’t know, I haven’t weighed myself since we got to China, but my pants still fit well, so hopefully thinner or the same

c) richer or poorer?

Matt – Poorer
Angel – Poorer, but with fewer expenses

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Matt – Trust that everything would be okay in the end
Angel – Organizing time with my students

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Matt – Worrying
Angel – Assignments for my students

20. How did you spend Christmas in 2011?

Matt – Went to church and rode around Tianjin with Ariel
Angel – Ate breakfast at McDonald’s with Matthew, went to the international fellowship, hung out with Ariel

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?

Matt – I fall in love every day with the same woman
Angel – Nope, just stayed in love

22. What was your favorite TV program?

Matt – Modern Family
Angel – Dollhouse

23. What did you do for your birthday in 2011?

Matt – Went out for Indian food with my whole family
Angel – I was super sick, but Matthew still took me out to Coldstone and to Walmart

24. What was the best book you read?

Matt – Oryx and Crake
Angel – this free Nook book called Mary Magdalene – A Woman Who Loved. I also loved The Hunger Games

25. What did you want and get?

Matt – A job in China
Angel – Lots of things, a Kinect a projector, to hang out with David in Chicago

26. What did you want and not get?

Matt – To hang out with my family for Christmas
Angel – An office chair and a memory foam pad. And a Chinese massage. (Maybe next week?)

27. What was your favorite film of this year?

Matt – Green Hornet
Angel –  X Men

28. Did you make some new friends this year?

Matt – Yes
Angel – Yes

29.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Matt – If I was already fluent in Chinese
Angel – Knowing the expectations of our school about teaching and grading, etc.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

Matt – Old Chinese Man
Angel –  Boring teacher?

31. What kept you sane?

Matt – My wife. That means you. Though sometimes you did make me a little insane. You can’t have the honey without the macademias.
Angel – Matthew. Jesus.

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Matt – Fancy? What is this, England? That Kim Jong-un guy is pretty fancy.
Angel –  I don’t know, I guess Kiefer Sutherland because 24 got me through many hours of boring essay grading.

33. What political issue stirred you the most?

Matt – Occupy Wall Street
Angel –  Environmental Protection and Food Safety

34. Who did you miss?

Matt – My family
Angel – I probably missed our dog the most since we lived with her every day.

35. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011. 

Matt – Even if someone says the water is okay, if you suspect it’s bad, don’t drink it.
Angel –  Never trust a Chinese person giving you directions. No matter how confident they sound.

In college, I had an on-again, off-again relationship with a local church. I attended nearly every week of my freshman year, and at the end of the year, I felt like I knew no one.

The youth pastor was really nice and invited me to get involved in the youth ministry, but one night of bowling with teenagers was enough to prove to me that I was no longer cut out to handle groups of people under the age of 18 on a regular basis. So I looked for other ways to get involved in the church (turned out, there were none for young adults like me who didn’t want to do children’s or youth ministry), and I showed up every Sunday morning and listened to the sermon.

I still miss the sermons at that church. The pastor had a doctorate and preached amazing sermons that were both spiritually compelling and intellectually stimulating. He engaged your emotions, made you laugh, and made you fall in love with the Bible, especially the Old Testament. He could make the most random passages from the OT unbelievably relevant to 21st century life.

But with no way for me to really get involved in the church, I never felt at home. I stopped going during my sophomore and junior years because I so desperately wanted a “home church” again. I looked at many other churches, but none of them really fit.

Finally, senior year, I ended up back at the same church. I determined that I would stick it out and force the church to become my home, like it or not.

I remember one Sunday morning, I had been having a terrible week. My emotions were haywire and all I wanted to do was hide from the world. I was depressed, and I didn’t really want to go to church, but I wanted to get out of the house, and maybe, just maybe church would make me feel better.

I was so discouraged that morning, I didn’t even have the heart to take a shower and wear nice clothes. I went in ratty workout pants and a sweatshirt. Now, this church wasn’t exactly an old-fashioned, dress-up kind of church. But I personally like dressing up a little bit on Sunday mornings. I don’t think I had ever before in my life gone to church on a Sunday morning in workout pants and a hoodie. But my entire body was reflecting my emotional state that morning, and I just didn’t have the heart to care.

I showed up at church, slumped by myself in a middle aisle, and made it through the entire service without anyone noticing me or talking to me. I remember thinking that if this church really had a strong community life, if I really belonged there, that surely someone would notice how strange it was for me to show up to church practically wearing pajamas and huddling by myself. Someone would have shown concern and asked what was wrong. But people barely remembered my name, let alone my normal demeanor and clothing choices.

Fast forward many years…Matt and I ended up at Calvary Church in Naperville after we got engaged. We wanted to find a church neither one of us had attended before, so it didn’t feel like one of us had to give up our church for the other. I was pretty nervous about going to Calvary. It was much bigger than any church I had ever attended. I thought there was no way you could get to really know people in a place like that. After all, I had enough trouble in a church of a couple hundred in Wheaton. How could I make real friends in a church of thousands?

Last week, various stressors of moving were really getting to me. I showed up to Calvary late on Sunday morning, fake smile pasted on my face, wearing the right colors for Sunday morning worship in the choir. I snuck my way behind the alto section and tried to get into my usual spot in the back row of the sopranos without anyone noticing. One of my friends in the tenor section turned around and said, “Angel, what’s wrong?”

I hesitated. How could he tell something was wrong? I hadn’t come in my pajamas. I was even smiling.

“It’s been a stressful week,” I acknowledged.

“I can see it in your face,” he said.

After just a few short years at Calvary, coming there is like coming home. One look at my face, and friends notice what’s going on. There’s no hiding. But there is sharing, praying, caring. Love.

I will miss you so much, Calvary friends (family). I already can’t wait to come home and visit you next summer. Thank you for being the hands and feet of Jesus in our lives, for noticing, listening, sharing, and praying. We love you!

The first day at our apartment, August 9th 2009

The last day at our apartment, July 31st, 2011

I used to be a cry baby when I was a kid. I’m not talking about ‘I broke my ankle so I’ll shed a tear’, I mean all out bawling. Like, at the end of The Land Before Time in first grade, I definitely cried. Somebody took my toy? Cry. Have to practice my cello? Cry. Bad haircut? Cry.

So, that’s why, as I got older, I tried to curb the waterworks since it’s not “cool” or “socially acceptable” for a teenage boy to cry. And, for most of my life since those awkward and emotional teenage years I haven’t all out bawled. I might shed a few tears at a funeral or emotional goodbye here or there (When Po found out that his family was killed in Kung Fu Panda 2? I might or might not have sniffled a little bit), but for the most part I’ve been pretty stoic.

Well, I broke my streak on Sunday night, July 31st. Angel and I moved out from our apartment in Naperville, I had a moment (albeit a long one) of real emotion as we drove away for the last time. Granted, we had been working pretty much non-stop the entire week selling most of our possessions on Craigslist, packing our bags to be ready for China, and cleaning our apartment. Getting rid of old stuff and moving really make me sentimental. But really, that was our place. P.S., Angel and me. As we pulled into a parking spot at Walgreens – our Walgreens – I couldn’t help but let it all out. Angel asked me, “So…are you going to do this every time you say goodbye to someone this next week?”

All that to say, we’ve made a big step towards China, and it’s suddenly and surprisingly more real than before. I’m feeling better about moving now that the packing is over.  As I look at most of my day-to-day life compressed into two 50 lb. suitcases and two carry-on bags, I’m reminded about how much of my stuff was unnecessary. And, how glad I’ll be when I’m done hauling them around airports, hostels, and trains.

Enjoy some before and after pics.

Before: Our stuff all over the apartment

After: All of our stuff, compressed

Nostalgia is an interesting thing to track in myself as we go through this pre-transition period. There’s a lot to be done – sorting, cleaning, packing, visiting, selling, etc etc. In the midst of all of that, some days I feel emotionally strong. I’m focused on the present and what needs to be done. I’m enjoying time with loved ones and making the most of each moment.

And then other days (like today), for no reason at all, I get in a sad funk. I start to think about the future and how much needs to get done. I have a brief panic attack and start going into hyperdrive on all the aforementioned activities (I’ve already posted 4 new ads on Craigslist this morning.) And hovering over it all is this emotional sense that we’re leaving and about to go through an unprecedented transitional time. I miss our dog (who we gave away last month when we still thought we were leaving tomorrow). I feel overwhelmed by the choices that need to be made in sorting through our things and figuring out what to pack. I feel sad when I think about loved ones we will keep in touch with – but things won’t be quite the same. I think about the many things that I’m going to miss – our church, our apartment complex, riding bikes to the forest preserve down the street. The past and the changed future begin to overshadow the present, and suddenly, I’m not enjoying the moment.

I know that this will pass. Tomorrow I’ll probably enjoy the day’s activities again. I’ll be able to focus on stuff that needs to get done without having it remind me of all that we’re leaving.

But for today, I have to remind myself that a) it’s okay to feel nostalgic and miss people/things and b) change is part of life. It’s tempting to let myself think that if we would just stay here forever, none of these sad experiences would have to happen. But when I’m honest with myself, I know that’s not true. Life changes, people grow, jobs come and go. You can’t escape or avoid transition, even if you stay in one place. So we might as well embrace the things God puts on our hearts and risk anything and everything to follow His leading.

When I get in these funks, the one thing that lifts my countenance is knowing that God is unchanging. Wherever I am, however I feel, He is the same. And His character is trustworthy. His decisions are perfect. His plan is good. When I don’t know the answers, and I feel angry/confused/sad/misunderstood/hurt, He is still Love.

Bad dreams. Everyone has them. But does everyone have “night terror” experiences?

Occasionally I will have a dream that is so scary and so realistic that I act out physically in real life. I call these experiences “night terrors.” They’re different from regular bad dreams in that instead of just waking up with your heart racing and maybe a small gasp, you do something extreme and noisy like you would if this “night terror” were actually in the room with you. They aren’t just bad scenarios; they are physical bad things getting near to you so that you feel the need to physically react to them.

This is kind of what the crab in my dream looked like. Photo by bob in swamp (flickr.com)

Last night I had the first night terror I’ve had in a year or so. It was a doozy. I dreamed that there was a large black crab-like thing quickly coming toward me. I don’t remember anything else from the dream, no chase scenes or character development. Just a huge scary crab trying to attack me. In my dream, I was in bed and the crab was about to crawl over the blanket onto me.

Apparently I screamed in real life, “snaked” off the bed at top speed, opened both the door to the bathroom and the door to the living room, and army crawled into the living room before I fully woke up. All of this took about 5 seconds because I was in such desperation to get away from the giant crab.

When I became fully awake, on the floor in the living room, Matt was sitting behind me asking, “What’s wrong? What is it? Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” I said uncertainly. I was definitely awake now, but I could have sworn that the crab was real. But if Matt was asking me what was wrong, he obviously didn’t see a crab, so it must have been a dream, right?

“What happened?” he asked again.

“Um, there was a large spider or crab-looking thing coming at me,” I said. “I guess it was a dream.”

Here is a major point where night terrors differ from dreams. When I have a dream, I know that it was just a dream when I wake up. Even if things are realistic and people are familiar, I know that I wasn’t just flying or talking to someone in real life. I’m in my bed, and the line between dream and reality is quite clear. But with night terrors, I have to turn on the light and see with my own eyes that whatever was happening right before I woke up is not actually happening in real life. My brain is initially convinced that the terror was completely real.

After realizing that the crab was not real, I went back to bed with Matt. I felt horrible. I had terrified myself and Matt, and we could hear all of our neighbors awake and moving around too. (It was about 4 in the morning.) At first, Matt was kind of mad at me. He thought I had been having a seizure or something since I had screamed so loudly. But when I started crying because I felt so bad for waking everyone up for something so stupid, yet uncontrollable, he apologized and said he was just tired. He prayed for us and asked God to give us peaceful sleep and keep any demonic attacks at bay.

Matt said he sensed an oppressive feeling in the room, so he thought the dream was demonic.

I’m not so sure. I think there have been times when I know I’ve felt demonic oppression in dreams or at night. But I didn’t feel that way last night. I wasn’t upset before I went to bed; I wasn’t particularly stressed out. There are difficult things that I’m dealing with in life right now, of course, but I wasn’t feeling oppressed when I went to sleep or when I woke up.

Who knows? Maybe night terror experiences are always caused by spiritual attack. But I feel like they could also just be the body and brain preparing for extreme situations in real life. Now I know that if I need to, I can escape at top speed from a giant crab. Or at least have the courage and energy to try.

Does anyone else out there have night terrors? Have you woken up and found yourself running from danger, screaming, or fighting to escape? Do you think these experiences are a normal part of life, or something darker?