It's All Coming Back, All Coming Back to Me Now.

Thank you Lil Rounds for singing a Celine Dion song on American Idol and providing me with the inspiration to come up with the title of this post.

Do any of you out there have moments when something happens in your everyday normal life and suddenly some memory from long ago comes flooding back to you? Maybe it's just me. [Interruption: Would the general population please stop voting for this moron currently singing on AI? He will kill me before the Conficker worm does.]

So back to the matter at hand. This morning I stopped by Publix to get some deli turkey for lunch sandwiches this week. I realized about halfway home for lunch that I left said turkey in the fridge at work. Curse word. Just when I began to sulk about the fact that I was inevitably going to spend another day stuck in the peanut butter and honey sandwich humdrum, I remembered something that was a staple for me during college: Turkey and swiss on a bagel. YUM. Talk about a Chow Hall speciality. The remainder of the trip home was spent thinking about my daily lunch routine of telling Miss Sue hey as she swiped my student ID, scooting past the Sig-O table to avoid the snide comments of boys who shall remain nameless because I'm sure that they are much more mature now than they were in college, claiming my spot at "Our Table", walking to the toaster to throw a bagel in, and then finally end up in the deli line. In the deli line I would ask Miss Judy Wu (Her husband Mr. Quasimoto worked in the library)for two pieces of turkey and one piece of swiss cheese. She would always repeat it back to me with a super sweet smile on her face and hand me my requested goods. And then I would go back to the toaster where with any luck my bagel would be there without a single burn mark waiting for me to put the pieces together and warm in the microwave for 25 seconds. We won't talk about the oreo "blizzards" that I also made on a regular basis. Isn't that weird? I literally have not had nor even thought about a turkey and swiss bagel in nearly 8 years yet I can remember that part of my life just like it was yesterday. I can remember the conversations, the drama, the fun, the time when Corey McLeroy got taken to Chow Hall jail by Ed Davis and when Dusty Hamby asked for a "Hot Pocket". In most countries they are referred to as calzones, I believe. In a split second you can go right back to another place in time and relive those emotions and feelings associated with those memories. I still do this everytime I hear Sweet Child O'Mine on the radio too. But that's just because Axl wrote that song about me prior to our marriage. Just seeing if you're paying attention.

For the most part these little memory jolts take me back to good times. Fun times. Happy times. Most of the time. However there are some reminders that take me back to scary times. Uncertain times. Times that I would prefer never to relive again. It never fails...every time I'm driving down 316 and see an ambulance, I am right back in my apartment in Dahlonega on a rainy Sunday night exactly two years ago tomorrow: April 1. Every single time, I feel the uncertainty and fear creep in, and my heart just aches for the family of whoever is being rushed down the road toward the hospital. Because I know what it's like to be one of those family members who doesn't know what's going on or if a person they love is going to make it. It's kind of hard to believe that it's been 2 years since dad first got sick. The first 5 weeks after he got sick seemed like a decade compared to the subsequent weeks and months that have followed. When I called home on that Sunday night after Brothers & Sisters went off to make sure that my family had made it home from Ethan's ball tournament ok and to wish my parents a happy 30th anniversary one more time [side note: What fools get married on April Fool's Day anyway? That should explain so much about me.], I never imagined that during the course of the short conversation that I had with my mom that dad would go into respiratory arrest, he would be unresponsive, and she would begin to administer CPR while my two baby brothers called 911. I've never felt more helpless in my life being an hour away and having no idea what was happening. Yet when all of those terrible uncertain feelings come rushing back even now, they are followed up by the same feeling that I had on that night when I was waiting for Justin to come and pick me up: calmness. [Admittedly, I wasn't calm at first...I spent a good 10 minutes literally spinning in circles in the middle of the floor because I could not do anything else.] And when that sense of calm sweeps over me, I am reminded that it's going to be ok. Not because I have the ability to make it ok, but because the One who can loves me and cares for me even in the midst of uncertainty. Why, after I've had such an obvious reminder, is it so easy for me to forget this little lesson on a daily basis? Because I'm human. Because I sin. Because I'm me. But in spite of me and all of my imperfections and flaws, I'm forgiven. I'm protected. I'm reassured. I'm comforted. I'm thankful.