I’ve learned that chocolate milk chases nightmares away and that time doesn’t heal all hurts it just dulls them some.  I’ve learned that things never happen like you plan them, but the way they turn out is inevitably better anyway.  I’ve learned that hugs transcend language barriers, love crosses borders and spring always comes even if the colors are different when you live near the Equator.

I’ve learned to carry duct tape in my backpack, four quarters in my pocket, and Jesus in my heart.  I’ve learned that cold showers can be good things and that it’s okay to put off a to-do list until tomorrow.  I’ve learned that children are resilient and that adults hold grudges and that forgiveness should be free.

I’ve learned that I sleep better under one of Mamaw’s quilts and that people are life’s richest treasures.  Sunrises are meant to be seen and sunsets should steal your breath.  Exercise doesn’t give you the right to clean out your refrigerator, but eating your weight in chocolate is okay sometimes.  I’ve learned that time is precious and that it is fleeting.

I’ve learned that my future isn’t dictated by my past and that the greatest freedom to be found is in knowing who you are.  I’ve learned that some roads are curvy and mountainous and others are straight and sure for miles upon miles and that both of those roads lead to somewhere and going somewhere is always better than going nowhere.

I’ve learned that it’s okay to be imperfect, but not to be insecure.  I’ve learned that guarding your heart keeps you from loving completely and being loved and that it’s okay to shed tears for people that you’ve never met.  I’ve learned that I can’t change the world by myself, but that I can make a difference.  I’ve learned that life is short and good and that there’s nothing I enjoy more than living it.

You’d think I’d be used to them by now.  I’ve rushed through more than I can name and couldn’t possibly add up all the hours I’ve spent waiting on floors or sleeping in uncomfortable chairs.  I walk down concourses with no sense of panic and can take off my shoes and clear security before most people finish packing their gels and liquids into a Ziploc bag.

And still airports amaze me.  The steady rush of people.  The smell of overpriced, undercooked food.  The bookstores and magazines that no one can pass by.  The faces of businessmen, stern and focused.  The tears of homecoming.  The tears of leaving a life behind.  Yes, airports amaze me.

I guess it’s the state of limbo, the waiting to let go of the people that have seen me off in order to embrace the people that are waiting for me in the next place that’s on my list.

There’s the sense of independence, too, I suppose.  The knowing that I’m alone and capable and that if everything in the world goes wrong- the flight is cancelled or overbooked, my money runs out, my luggage is lost, my itinerary is a day off- whatever the case may be, that I can handle it, even if I cry sometimes.

Airports.

They give birth to confidence, provide a segue and an escape, and they personify my life in transition.  But this time as I wandered through Atlanta’s 563 concourses, I realized that I’m finally ready to stay home for awhile.

Or maybe just take someone with me for a change.

The too cute team that won the Colombian national competition, thus receiving an invitation to the Global Finals in Knoxville, TN.

How exciting is that?

I’m bringing my Colombian angels to the Dirty South!  Get excited.

That’s obvious enough seeing as how I pack up the contents of my life and move them all over the planet time and time again.  But there truly is something so empowering about getting to know what once seemed impossible.  Even if what you’re getting to know is yourself.

So, here I am at the beginning of another year and the novelty of it almost overwhelms me.  There is all of 2009 to see and to breathe in and I just know that hidden in it are one thousand treasures. 

I’m not sure what they are yet.  Perhaps they are diamonds entombed in the stone wall around my heart.  Or maybe they are new friends or new adventures.  It could be that the treasure is coming home. 

I honestly haven’t the faintest idea, but I do know this:  I’d like to take this freshness and the feeling that it gives me and bottle it up so that someday, like in late Novemeber when days are short and winds are cold, I could take it out and have a little sip.

What about you?

Now I know it’s not like that really.  It seems a broken heart is just another one of life’s aches.  An ache that is there within, but that goes unnoticed some days.  It’s a sort of hurt that hides beneath everyday activities and is covered by the glory of a sunrise or the sweeping of a breeze.

And though that isn’t as romantic as books or movies would have it seem, I think I like this version better.  After all, my heart wasn’t broken in the Hollywood sort of fashion.

My highschool love that married his college love isn’t to blame nor the man that came after him.  And I can’t give the credit to a masked stranger in a foreign land or some prince that fled when the clock struck twelve.  It wasn’t like that at all.

My best friend broke my heart instead.

He ripped it to pieces and spread them about in cities and states and countries abroad.  I looked at those shreds of me for a while and I let them dance there in the wind.  I let them fall to the earth and be trampled by strangers and I let the rains and tears soak them through.

For the briefest of moments, or months if you must, I thought I’d lost those bits of me forever, but morning broke as it always does. And in the sweetness of her glow, I started to gather those scattered pieces.  They aren’t the same at all and some are missing still, but they’ve put back together well.

There are scars and scratches to be sure, but the gaping wound is gone.  It’s painted over carefully by the colors of grace and the promise of tomorrows and the shadows and lights make it more beautiful than the original, I like to think.

It seems that a broken heart isn’t the greatest tragedy of all.

Maybe it’s like a keepsake instead.  Something you pick up along the way and cling to for a bit until life takes the novelty away.  Then you move it to some drawer in the depths of you, and though it’s still there, you think of it less often. It rattles once and again and bumps against the walls, but its presence doesn’t overwhelm you like it did at first.

Yes, a broken heart just sits there like a keepsake while the years fade its shine.

I’m generally pretty patient.  Hello.  I work with nine year olds.  I have to be.

Truth be told, I can only think of two things that really try me.  The opposite sex.  (No surprise there)  And as of late, the incredible mood swings of the internet here in the coffee region.  Come to think of it the opposite sex is rather temperamental, too, huh?

Moving on.

I’ve drafted approximately seventeen blog posts, 58 emails and 73 facebook messages (read:  I never exaggerate) in the last week only to have them lost somewhere in cybersphere when the internet goes haywire.  I’ve started 62 skype chats and gmail chats and phone conversations and had them cut off mid important sentence. 

People are going to think I’m mad at them or ignoring them or that my life has gotten too boring to discuss.  And it hasn’t!  I’m here!  I’m fun!  I’ve got stories to tell and the internet just.  won’t.  let.  me.  do.  it!

And I didn’t even mention the number of episodes of Friday Night Lights I haven’t been able to watch via Surf the Channel!  Friends, the Dillon Panthers need me to help them pull this state bid off.  Oh, and poor Jason Street!  That fine young man is in serious need of my wise relational counsel. 

Oh, ye internet, how I loathe thee!  At least for today.  Maybe tomorrow we can be friends again.  You know, like, if you get your act together and function properly.

Then I went off to school and met the girls that changed my idea of friendship forever.  Girls that taught me about loving unconditionally and how loyalty fights better and stronger than any heavy weight champ on the planet.  Girls that took me dancing, kept me up late, and blessed me with the knowledge of good naps and  box fans.  Girls that challenged my ideals and graciously helped me to put on the freshmen fifteen (or forty).

Lauren taught me about work ethic and how sometimes you have to be by yourself to get things done.  She swam with me before the sun came up and she left notes on my door and books on my bed and every once in a while she’d play the piano for me and I think I knew then that there really was a Somewhere over the rainbow.

Ann was always the one with the spunk begging me to go out, to see people, to do things that were out of my realm of comfort and to wear mascara while I did them.  She made me stand up for myself and believe in myself and when I was lying at rock bottom, she was standing over me in a pink and leopard print halter top telling the psycho that left me there to back up or die. 

And then there was Kathryn.  Sweet Kathryn who kept me grounded and sane and laughing at imaginary kittens and the new girlfriends of old boyfriends.  She wrote notes to me during chapter meetings and was marching right behind me when I figured out that I wasn’t made for the sorority life.  And when I came home from Australia and said I was moving to Oxford because I wasn’t strong enough to go back to Starkville, she said, “Then I’m coming, too.” 

I don’t remember exactly when I started writing down the list, but I know I did it because of them. 

Maybe it was in a dorm room on the sixth floor of Rice or maybe it was when we were making folders for all of our travel plans.  Or it could have been when we went on that scandalous trip to the beach.  Or one night in that purple Accord with its windows down.  Or in Granny and Pop Pop’s house on a long weekend.  On top bunks and futons or in the midst of The Intervention.  At the reservoir eating sticky buns.  In Derek and Craig’s living room floor.  Over bread pudding at Oby’s. 

So, here’s what I wrote down on some random day when I was 18 or so.  A list of all the things I wanted to do before I turned 30.  My little List o’ Dreams.

Back then, 30 sure seemed far away.

Because if I don’t some folks might die today and that’s just not becoming of a lady, now is it?

A list should suffice as the aforementioned deep, cleansing breath.

• I cannot expect people to value my time as much as I do.
• Manizales weather does NOTHING for my hair.
• It’s fall in Mississippi and I’m not there.
• I should learn to say no more often.
• There is no Sonic Diet Coke in Colombia.
• The Virus o’ Death stole my Spanish.
• I could eat my weight in biscuits today and y’all, that’s a lot of biscuits.

Thank you, bloggy friends, for the diarreah of the mouth that you just allowed me.  Which, I assure you, is so very much better than the diarreah o’ death of last week’s glory.  Although, I did lose eight pounds. 

It’s not the diet of choice, but hey, whatever works.

Yes, I had a fantastic trip to the Amazon.  It was all that I expected and more.  It was breathtaking and heartbreaking and awe inspiring and I have a journal full of things to share with you soon.

Yes, I said soon.

Because today, friends, is day four of the Virus o’ Death.

Or near death for those of you that might think I’m being dramatic.

I felt it coming on as our plane landed late on Friday night and by Saturday morning at 2:00 a.m. I was curled on the bathroom floor praying to the good Lord, whimpering for Momma, and cursing parasites, foreign countries, and salty tastes that bring on wretching.

Sunday and Monday were more of the same and today I finally went to the doctor.  (talk about challenging my Spanish vocabulary!)  I was poked and prodded and told I had invisible veins, but beautiful milky white arms.

Sisser would call me Casper or Pasty, but I rolled with it.  So did my stomach now that I think about it.

After three hours of an IV, a blood test, and another test you don’t want to know anything about, I am home.  Home with my inflamed colon, constricted gastrointestinal tract, a bag full of medicine, an order to stay home for another day and a Virus o’ Death that shall soon be defeated.

So, there.  Now you know why I haven’t written and hopefully your heart is just bleeding with sympathy.  I mean, it is, right?