A Story I've Been Waiting to Tell

July 26...One year ago today I left Colorado to move to Japan. Wow! Jikan ga tobimasu! I can’t believe it’s been A YEAR!!! Shinjirarenai! There were some days that passed slowly…but relatively few. Relatively few days of homesickness. Relatively few days of culture shock. Relatively few days of “What am I doing here?!” What an experience!

The months, weeks, days, and hours leading up to my departure were HECtic! Far far more that I expected—although I had expected it to be busy. Packing my classroom and bringing all my teaching materials home, sorting my stuff (what I would bring to Japan, what I would put in storage, what I would leave at my parents' house for easy access in case I needed them to mail something to me during the upcoming year), making multiple trips to Denver to store my stuff, calling my insurance company and my retirement fund manager, changing my address on all my accounts, finding one pair of shoes that would be dressy enough yet casual enough- and also neutral enough- to wear with everything I would potentially wear to school in Japan, finding clothes that would be cool enough to wear in the blazing summer heat of Japan and professional and conservative enough to be acceptable in a strict Japanese school environment, researching and ordering an electronic Japanese-English dictionary, researching and researching and finally buying a laptop, exchanging my money, selling my car. It seemed like everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. It was terrible. Things that should have taken an hour took three. Errand after errand had to be repeated. Because the person I needed to process some paperwork for me at the school district was out of the office, repeatedly. Because I received confusing and incomplete visa deadline information from the consulate. Because of banking transaction limits. I wasn’t supposed to have to paint my apartment, but then all of a sudden I did have to. My brand new computer sounded like a helicopter the first time I turned it on, so I had to return it for repairs...only to find out that it was irreparable and that there might not be another one in stock. It turned out that there was one, but I couldn't get it until the afternoon before I left...and I still needed to load all my music onto it. No matter how many times I weighed my suitcase I couldn't get a consistent reading on the scale. Frustration after frustration after frustration. Right up until the morning of my departure when I slept through my alarm and my roommate in the hotel in Denver woke me up thirteen minutes- THIRTEEN MINUTES!!!!- before I was supposed to be on the bus to DIA. Thirteen minutes to shower, lotion, get dressed, brush my teeth, gel my hair, stuff the few remaining things in my suitcase, ideally- put on make-up (but obviously nothing about this scenario is ideal), catch the elevator down 7 floors, check out of the hotel (= we had to actually go to the counter and turn in the key!), load my bags onto one bus, and board another bus. THIRTEEN MINUTES. I usually take showers longer than thirteen minutes! I was already exhausted and terribly sad and completely frustrated and overwhelmed by all the events leading up to this departure. Then, this! If I had to imagine the worst possible thing that could happen on the morning of my departure, I don't know if I could have come up with such a horrific scenario as this. As I boarded the bus to take the one remaining seat, the JET hiring coordinator sarcastically commented, "Nothing like getting an early start!" (Even now, a year later, I feel a weight of stress on my shoulders as I recall this shocking culmination.) I made my way down the narrow aisle bumping people with my carry-on bags. I took my seat as my mind raced. Did I have everything? Had I forgotten anything in the bathroom? Which pocket of my bag had my wallet in it? My passport? Did I have socks to wear on the plane? Was my hair gonna be frizzy for the next 24 hours of travel because I had just hurriedly put some gel in it while standing on the sidewalk in front of the hotel waiting in line to load my bags onto the bus? How could I have turned my alarm off in my sleep and have no recollection of it? How could my roommate have waited until SO late to wake me up, saying, "Mya, are you trying to sleep this late?" Why was this happening?? Why had all these things happened in the midst my preparations to go to Japan?! As I fought the tears, I thought, "Either God doesn't want me to go or Satan doesn't want me to go. One of them is definitely at work in all of this. There is NO WAY that all of these things went wrong by coincidence in the past week." The tears came, but I fought hard and was able to at least hold back the flood of sobs that were poised to rush out of my eyes and mouth. "God!", I silently screamed, "What is going on?? Do you not want me to go to Japan? I thought this is what You wanted. DO You want me to go? Please tell me. Please give me direction." ... "I can't handle one more thing."...Out of complete desperation, I prayed, "Please send me a guardian angel. To protect me, to watch over me, to make sure nothing else goes wrong." I don't know if I'd ever prayed for a guardian angel in my life until that moment. I tend to think that God watches out for me at all times as much as any time...I don't think there's really a need for me to pray for angels. But in that moment I thought that just in case praying for a guardian angel was actually helpful, I better do it then...Because I REALLY needed help.

Just a few minutes later we arrived at the airport. I claimed my bags from the bus and lined up to check in. The line stretched all the way back through the double glass doors and out to the sidewalk. As I rearranged my bags and tried to regroup in the early morning darkness, I heard someone say, "Mya?" I looked up and saw, just 5 feet from me, a teacher from school. In a gently comforting voice of amazement, she said, "Are you going to Japan now??" I said, "Yes". And as she hugged me, she said, "I'm your guardian angel. I'm here to tell you that everything's going to be okay."