New things, New leaves

I slept poorly for over a month round about the Thanksgiving-New Year's time frame. Unable to identify the reasons for lying awake for hours each night, I could only suffer through, finding myself irritable, exhausted, and addicted to caffeine.

For the last week, I've slept pretty well, and I attribute this newfound brilliant sleep the fact that I've been reading before bed. Not reading just anything, mind you, but Ian McEwan's Atonement. The phenomenal mental images conjured by his skill as a writer have transported me into a world of dramatic, dysfunctional family relationships in a place far-removed from my own life. Though I often find it hard to stop reading in order to get my required eight hours of sleep, once I close my eyes, I dream the night away in a peaceful slumber.

Thus, I believe I've turned over a new leaf, a new sleeping leaf, as it were.

That isn't, however, the only leaf I've turned in recent weeks. According to my sister, I'm a much different person than she has known and remembers. Granted, she's been away for a long time, but I cannot deny that my love of the outdoors and my ability to try new things has vastly expanded since I returned from my semester abroad in 2003, even more so since I attended grad school and started living away from all that was familiar.

Sometimes I am amazed at this person masquerading in my mind, in my body. And yet, it is me. I am more comfortable now than I was as a kid, adolescent, teenager, or young adult. I think I'm finally becoming me, which is immensely refreshing.

Two significant examples will be documented with photos in subsequent posts, but I will name them here:

• In December, I climbed a mountain.
• This past weekend, I went skiing.

I was renewed both times, physically through the initial exertion and following few days of pain, and spiritually by experiencing the infinite praise of Nature, the communing of forces beyond human control in silence. Sitting atop the mountain, staring over the patches of trees and at the skyline of Charlotte, Something spoke to my soul. I found my center again, which I felt I'd lost, or been in the process of losing for some time. Riding the ski lift to the top of the easiest hills, the muted sounds--wind whistling through fir trees, voices from the slopes, the swish and scrape of skis and snowboards through powdered snow--created a peaceful soundtrack for the day, the hour, the very minute. I could have sat up there, suspended (without the skis dangling from my 10 lb. boots), for hours.

All this is to say, I am a new creation. Thank God for that. Thus far my 25th year has been my best, my favorite. I'm have a feeling it will only continue to get better.