i've come to accept that my fate may very well lay in the hands of a certain city called West Fargo for the next 2 years and 8 months. little did we know when building a house last year that in order to receive the fantastic $8,000 new home owner tax credit we'd have to stick with the place for 3 years or repay our so generous government.

the majority of people we know seem to think we're ungracious or flat out stupid for even allowing the slightest desire to move after going through the work of building a house. i mean, doensn't the world and everyone know that you need to live in a place for the magical 3-5 years before moving to earn some equity...or just make it worth it? i think it's crazy bullshnap to (at this age, mind you, at the very least) settle for a place where something doesn't drive your heart wild to action and purpose. where you're not challenged to LIVE. where you can be as complacent as you want because everything is familiar and normal and easy peasy pah-cheesy. where you can't go sit at the top of a hill...or mountain...or volcano!! and watch life move about around you in the sunset and the city lights sparkle at night.

and it's definitely me, not him. i'm the restless, bipolar, unrelenting one of the group who can't commit to people or places and need the next adventure or high from experiencing something....new and beautiful! but is it all that bad?? up until i had to mature and get a career and be responsibly married (believe me, not a negative whatsoever, but the expectation of being responsible just because i'm married seems to me to be) i was more crazy for not dreaming and wanting to be so full of life and perspective and new-ness! now...i hear the little sputtle of polite laughter from each person i share just the top layer of icing of my restless-caked, dreaming mind. how many times have i heard the "oh ashley"... i keep hearing my normal side say "you're just soooo melodramatic." and how, in the past 3 years, has it come from dreaming and believing to "you're just soooo melodramatic."?

so much ado about everything. if this is really the place for me. for us. to really stay here another 2 years and 8 months, then we need to really really live here. experience all that the Fargo area has to offer. to find what drives our hearts wild to action and purpose within this place. to pull ourselves out of the thick muddy mud of complacency, and sit on top of the parking ramp to watch the sunset and city lights and experience all the life lessons we can quench out of it. it's scary to me because it's so boring. it's so mundane. it's so not overseas! it's so commital. it's so loooong. not for you, though, right? i know, 'it's really short in the scheme of life'...but it's 2 years 8 months! that's forever to me (melodramatic, i know, i know). work in an ICU and the vulnerability of each day is exhausting to understand.

so we'll see what happens. but i think i'd like to share it in a blog. i think. i might not be able to commit...! if not just for my sake, then maybe for someone else's eventually. it's been over a year and a half since i thought i had something to say. i think i'm frozen or stuck in a dream, like i am honestly completely going mindlessly crazy, not knowing if it's okay, hoping it's false. but it's alright.

this weekend i learned that a patient of recent died. no couple has affected me ever yet as much as this one. she stayed in his room after his first massive heart attack, not willing to leave the bedside, saying they've always been together and she's not leaving now. he did okay and they joked around all the time and we got to know them more than i wish we did and he transferred out. then his body tried to die again and he came back. she grabbed my arm and hung on as we settled him into our bed. she would hold his head and whisper in his ear as the ventilator did his breathing. and he did okay and transferred out. then he tried to die again and he came back. she was exhausted. she told me above the hum and hip hop of machines "i've always prayed i'd go before him, i just can't live without him." and he did okay and he discharged from the hospital.

and this weekend i learned that he did die, just a month after his first hospitalization with us. in the hospital. death and all his friends won the tug-of-war.

if nothing else, this whirlwind of a weekend after getting back to the country, this helped me decide that i am done in the intensive care unit. i accepted a new job today where i'll get to stick stuff up people's butts all day :) and i couldn't be more excited.

if i ever come back to the ICU to do this hellish work that no one should deal with every time they go to work, i have a lot of maturing to do. i feel totally defeated, but i knew the whole time, even before i started, that i didn't want to work there.

it's humbling and so wonderful at the same time. i think it'll feel freeing once it hits! death is always there. i accept that, i know there's so much more. i think a lot of people think they can deal with death just fine, but they've never seen it or experienced it or helped others experience it. living on this side of life it feels so final. especially when you don't really know what's going to happen to that soul from that lifeless body that you're taping up in a plastic garbage-bag-like tomb. maybe that's what was so hard for me. maybe i'm just a total puss.

i was reading tim ferriss' blog as he quoted Dr. King:

“I say to you, this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.

You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.

You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety.

And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.

You died when you refused to stand up for right.

You died when you refused to stand up for truth.

You died when you refused to stand up for justice.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
From the sermon “But, If Not” delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church on November 5, 1967.

i definitely am not stepping into anything heroic next. or a greater cause. it was so defining to work there. but i'm believing that i'm finding something amazing next... i don't so much understand it.

yet.

i think i'll learn to screenprint.

or knit.

i'm tired of crying today.

end of babble.

The Morkens were delivered via IcelandAir this morning to Keflavik @ 0620! We were picked up by our couchsurfing hosts Styrmir and Lilly and drove to their home on the marina cliff to meet their 3-year-old daughter, Freja, and thoroughly entertaining cat, Tristan...













This is the view from their living room window...whoever said Iceland weather changes every hour or minute totally lied. It was rainy and so windy today (38miles/hour) that even the seagulls couldn't fly forward.















Their home is the white one on the very right side of the photo. Icelanders are among the healthiest people in the world with a woman's life expectancy to be 83 and man's 79! Styrmir said it's because everyone has a tablespoon of cold liver oil and starting at 2 weeks old, babies are put in a carriage outdoors, irregardless of weather or storms, for 3-4 hours until they are 3-years-old...














Our couchsurfers hooked us up with sweet orange waterproof pants and maps and books that we can take along our travels! The wind really is holding Justin up...



Tonight we have some German couchsurfers also staying where we're at...and the journey begins...

...making every possible mistake.

what do you do when you know all the answers but have an impossible time living them? with what feels like everything. all the time. was it always this way?

bah.

"This is a happy end
'Cause you don't understand
Everything you have done
Why is everything so wrong?

This is a happy end
Come and give me your hand
I'll take you far away

I'm a new soul
I came to this strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit 'bout how to give and take

But since I came here
Felt the joy and the fear
Finding myself making every possible mistake"
-Yael Naim

yet still, hallelujah.

http://www.youngmatthew.com/poemaday.html#

the silence i have heard within myself has been for far too long. i don't know what my voice sounds like or what it even is. i am agreeable. i don't argue. i have been very content for very long to let you think whatever you will about whatever you think about.

maybe it's because i want to be a peacemaker. and i truly want to love people for who they are. and i want to be a listener and have you tell me anything you think/feel without feeling judged by yet another person...especially another Christian.

BUT. when i finally do have something to say it feels awkward. especially when i know it may offend another person. but sometimes it does need to be said, doesn't it? sometimes we are in a place to have a voice. sometimes the people who do have the louder voice are completely wrong and yet they have the louder voice and they are the only ones being heard. because we aren't saying anything.

we aren't saying anything.

sometimes it needs to be said and there is no one willing to do it. because it's uncomfortable. because maybe we don't really believe it in the first place...but feel that maybe we should...but not today. today is not the day to speak up.

but maybe today is the day.

i have "my own issues" with criticism. i sometimes thrive on it, because then i know that i'm actually doing something right. i sometimes fume with what i want to believe is "holy" anger because i can't believe another person who is supposed to be my friend or support would talk about me in such a way. but i usually do this only within me. but sometimes something needs to be said.

so i said it. or more so wrote it because it was an email sent to me.

and i wrote back a long, researched email and i used my voice that i usually stuff and sit on comfortably like one of those cushy couch cushions on your parents' new posh couch (which they can finally buy now that you're out of the house;)

and i was so embarrassed, so humiliated. after i sent it. why doesn't google give us more control to erase our mistakes?!

i began to rethink everything i had said and wished i could delete other people's inboxes for their own sake (or more so mine). i kept hoping that this email wouldn't change their view on me or lower my "cool" level or make them respect me less.

then a day passed (which sometimes we just need the day to be over and the new beginning offered with the next morning is profoundly different). i reread my email and was proud of it. i said everything my heart had been trying to shout out. it wasn't offensive, but was slightly heated. i gave my voice an outlet and it was the truth.

why do we try to be so careful to not step on our brother's and sister's toes? how will we ever bring heaven to earth without using our subtle voices to speak against wrong and injustice? if we are only working to be nonoffensive how will we ever challenge people to be the people they have been created to be? why do we keep our voices so subtle and meek?

so i'm talking in circles again...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LINNEA!!!