A short... Pause.

I feel like I should say something, however, I haven't the slightest idea what to say, honestly. Or maybe... I just don't know where I start. These past few days have been surreal in many ways. I've come back home from the other side of the planet and reentered my stateside life. This simple act , coupled with the staggering reality of "reentry shock" and having to adapt to old customs and ways of speaking and acting can be confusing and unsettling to say the least.

All this aside, I have recently watched my little sister walk down the isle... arm in arm with my father. I stood on the stage in support of her and her new husband. I watched both of my parents endure the emotional roller-coaster that events such as these inspire. I watched my sister, Leah Davis, return down that same isle as Leah Wadlington. I watched her greet and embrace full-grown, adult friends of ours, who--last I remember--were little kids playing at our house. I then watched Leah Wadlington walk through the foyer of my childhood church, get into a Limousine with a wonderful man who I am getting to know, and watch the both of them ride off together for their honeymoon.

Back at home, I have noticed a close childhood friend of mine has become very, very old. The 14-pound, white and brown Shih-tzu who watched me grow up, who played with me in the backyard and threw his hip out trying to go down our slide, now simply lays on the floor, wearing his little OSU sweater trying to keep himself warm, since his blood doesn't circulate as well as it used to.

My little brother, on the other hand, is, well... no longer little. When I first left for the Philippines, I could accurately call that small, farming-obsessed, little boy with the high-pitched voice, my "little brother." Now, he sounds like my dad and weighs nearly as much as I do. "Little" doesn't really do him justice any longer.

So much has happened in one-and-a-half years. A lot has changed. A lot has changed even with me. I live over 9,000 miles away. I straddle the lines of two very different worlds, and have left bits of my emotions and myself strung out somewhere in-between.

So here I sit. Alone in my living room in Ohio, after another Christmas, full from another Christmas dinner, listening to my Mom put away the left-overs and explain to the dog one more time why he can't have any more turkey. In many ways this scene is incredibly familiar, but in other ways... especially on the inside, its a scene that is new and a little scary. Its scary because I have been given a new realization of the passing of time, and the unrelenting process of change in my life. This is both wonderful and terrible. I have always loved and embraced change and transition, but there is also the frightening realization that it is, among many things, absolutely unstoppable. All I can do is pause, breathe, and remember the value of savoring every moment in life, taking nothing as mundane or meaningless.