Fear

Fear.
This word brings me so many questions and feelings that I feel like I must spit them out! BLAH! When I think of the word fear, I think about my trip in 7 days to Jordan, about people telling me not to go, about the possibility of terrorists, and I feel scared. The messages that people are telling me make me happy and angry, and because I am a teenager, it is affecting me. A lot. People tell me not to go because they care about me and want me to be safe, but I am angry because I don't want people being negative and making this trip harder than it already is. I am also angry because they don't understand what this trip means to me on an educational and spiritual level. On a spiritual level this trip is a barrier in my conscious. I have always felt the need to break through my fear and be free. Many people may look at me and think that I already have reached this, by going to France, and are probably shocked that I am going to Jordan. Well, I have not reached this point of epiphany and freeness. I want it so bad and this entire year I have tasted it, just haven't had the chance to really grasp it. In my mind, I play a little fantasy of me standing in a dark room and a blank wall right in front of me. All of a sudden, that wall starts to get filled with pictures of people who have made me cry, caused me pain, and put me down. I close my eyes and take in all of that sadness and fear. Then, as in any good movie scene, I plainly open my eyes, I stare head on at the wall, and, without saying a word, I lift up my hands and shatter the wall like Moses parting the Red Sea. I am free. As I step beyond the wall, I am greeted by mossy green grass that carpets rolling hills and makes a bed for wonderful wildflowers. This is how I imagine my freedom, very innocent, welcoming, and a little bit hippy too. =] My freedom is running barefoot through hills, dancing, picking up flowers, laughing, swimming, and feeling happy. (If that is not a hippy thing to say, then I don't know what is!) In this little fantasy world, I can escape. It may be for a minute or two, but it helps me push on. I want to find my sense of freedom by going to Jordan. I need to prove to myself that I can be strong and go beyond my fear. Now, that doesn't mean I am going to be stupid while in Jordan, because if you think that, you are seriously mistaken and, in fact, rather insulting to me. After countless hours of research and reading about women's experiences in Jordan, my Mom and I know the ins and outs. Now, if anything crazy were to happen to me, it would not be because we were acting stupid and frolicking through the streets in Abercrombie skirts singing America the Beautiful. No. We know what we have to do to stay safe. The rest is out of our hands, and that is something I have most definitely learned.
I now look at scary and traumatic events in my life differently. It is just the course my life has to take. If our car had not been completely burned by the man committing suicide next to it, in Florence Italy, this whole trip would have never been dreamed of. Now, I must admit that this entire year (if you have no idea what I am talking about, my mom and I are taking a year to go live in France, but that plan has changed) I felt like there was just one step that we were not taking. The trip had not been taken to the next level, and frankly I was rather disappointed and angry. Now I will only confide this once, but when my mom and I first saw our car completely burnt and destroyed, the third thing that went through my mind was "YAY!" This may sound completely bizarre, but for a second I was actually happy. My slow solitary life in France just had a surprising JOLT (most of you probably think I am crazy because we were traveling every couple weeks, but...). I was also feeling shock and being completely scared, but for a second, my sub-conscious was screaming, woohooo, this is going to bring change. During that second of joy I knew that things were going to be okay and we would be propelled to something good. Now 2 seconds later, I was crying and thinking that this was the end of the world. But now that I look back on the whole incident, I know that my sub-conscious was right.

These past couple days I have been trying not to think about the Jordan trip because I have no idea what to expect, and I don't want to expect anything. I don't want to make any statements about the country before I have been there. The only thing that I can expect out of this trip is that I will learn a lot. It is a completely different culture because it is dominated by Islam. (uh Duh, Bailey!) But, I have even noticed huge differences between France and the United states, so yeah, I think there will be quite a few differences between USA and Jordan. I hope that in this blog, I can provide a little window into my trip. Not just what I am doing, but the emotional ride that accompanies it, and all of my observations. I hope it will be interesting enough.

Bisous,

Bailey


P.S. I would like to share a quote that my mom told me about 2 hours after we found our car completely burnt, and I was having a lot of anxiety about what God wanted and that all of our plans were ruined. She said....


"If you want to make God laugh, make plans."