Boxes

On Thursday I packed up my belongings. I packed them in boxes, put them in suitcases, and crammed as much as I could into my car. My life is reduced to boxes. I drove to my parents house in Michigan and began unpacking my carefully packed car. As I walked up the stairs in their house and opened my bedroom door I was greeted by more boxes. I keep thinking, "what are in these boxes?" I haven't really missed much in the last few months. Can I really have this much stuff?

I feel a little better realizing my room here is pretty small which creates the feeling of being packed with my belongings. How did I get so much stuff? I have a strong urge to just take boxes and get rid of it all, but I know there are treasured things in my boxes. Yet I won't use any of my things for a year if not longer.

These boxes also mean it is final. I have moved back in with my parents (which wasn't really part of my long term plan), I am unemployed, and I am right where I am suppose to be. I feel that sometimes God hands me a box of my life. It is full of things for me to go through and process, to laugh about, to feel my heart break with, and to be able to use. Boxes, so many boxes..I'm just glad I don't always have to move the boxes God gives me.

December already?

Time seems to be slipping by. This is sad and encouraging to my heart. It is sad because I will be leaving my life here in Marion soon, which I will miss. It is encouraging because it means a new chapter in my life is going to start. It is also sad because during moments with my friends I don't want the time to end. I want to freeze the moment and remember the conversations we had and the knowledge of knowing we are together in this moment.

I freeze moments in my mind that I love returning to and want to keep up my recollections. I know there will be days in Cambodia when I need to remember my ARD who put a orange cone in his parking spot to save it and my other ARD who moved it to take the spot. I want to remember the night I stayed up with 3 other friends playing Speed Scrabble till 3 in the morning. I never want to forget singing "Your too good to be true" at the top of my lungs with my roommate in Evans as we sang our hearts out to the empty hall way.

The encouragement I have in the middle of feeling sad is know that I have time stretching out in front of me next year. I get to be stretched and challenged in ways I can't even imagine; this is building excitement in my little adventurous heart. I want to embrace this next year because I know that time will keep moving and it will be over sooner then I can even know, which feels sad.

Fall

Fall is the best time of the year...I enjoy summer, but fall seems to steal my heart. I love the leaves and colors that are everywhere! I keep taking mental pictures for myself because for the first time in my life, I will miss fall. I won't get to see the leaves change or smell them being burned. No crisp fall air as I run, or smile as the sun come out from behind the big fall clouds.

I can't say I will miss winter here in the states...but fall I will. Time seems to be going so very fast. I find myself unable to believe that October is half over. I keep seeing God work in and around me and I love living with my roommate...it is like college, but even better. All these things I have to trust to God, He knows what my life will look like when I come back. I am excited about leaving and reaching out for what God is putting before me, but right now I'm kind of sad to be leaving.

Adventures in Renting

I have moved into my new apartment and have already had some adventures in my new apartment...

1. Setting up furniture...I had to move my pie safe to a different location because the floor is slanted and the doors to the pie safe wouldn't stay closed.

2. No air conditioning...trying to keep a good balance of air flow even when it is raining and forgot to close one of the windows and got the floor all wet.

3. Parking on the street...having to take my heels off to cross the small river that had formed between me and the sidewalk to my door.

4. No hot water...I had to heat water to take a shower yesterday. Can't say I ever thought I would have to do that.

....I'm sure there will be more to come later.

What has been going on...

Time seems to have slipped past me. The last few months have been crazy. The end of April was filled with saying good bye and transition from Spring to May term housing. During May I had almost a full area of students as well as finishing up reports, saying good bye to the life I have lived the last 4 years, saying good bye to people I have lived and worked with, packing up my apartment, and preparing for Cambodia. Now it is the beginning of June. I leave in 5 days to fly around the world, I will be starting a new part time job when I get back, and I will be moving completely out of my current apartment to some place new.

It all seems to roll on top of each other. It all feel lined up ready to go. This happens first, and then that next, followed by that, and lastly this. Where is there time to breath and think? I just want a few moments of stability and normalcy but I don't think I will have them until I find a place to live and am settled into it. When I no longer walk into my house and see nothing hanging on my walls and when I can't find something I wonder what box I put it in. (then I think about how I have too much stuff and should throw it all away).

That is what my life has been these last few months and the journey keeps going. Who knows what I will have to write about after Cambodia and a summer full of weddings, moving, and starting a new job...we will have to wait and see.

The journey

I am going to Cambodia. I have been accepted to go on the trip in June and I am very excited. I am looking forward to diving into this culture and for the first time with different eyes. I will be looking to see if this is where God wants me to come back. Will this be the place I call home for while? Are these the people I will fall in love with and be broken over?

There is a feeling of adventure and also truth swirled together. It is something new and something that will change everything in my life. Even if God directs me not to go back to Cambodia it doesn't matter. What ever path he has laid before me I will walk, I will run, and I will dance on until He tells me differently. So I have joy, fear, and anticipation. And I am going.

chaos

I'm pretty sure that there is a lesson to be learned in my life right now. I am the type of person who likes structure and order. I have a calendar with reminders about my meetings and I write things down so I don't forget where I have to be and what is going on. Yet in the last month my life each week seems to give me a new surprise. Not just in my job but also personally.

On the job front I think I am getting a taste of anything I have not yet experienced in my job. It started with the fire and earlier this week I had to deal with a huge mental health issue. Someone asked me what all was on the list of things I have not yet dealt with. What? Are you crazy? That's just asking for more stuff to keep getting piled on. I didn't say that to them...I laughed and said I was not making a list. I just know the things I have been dealing with I have not had to deal with yet and other people have.

Personally I am looking at taking a trip overseas to see if that is where God wants me and yet knowing I will have to be moving out of my apartment and needing a job and have no idea what that is going to look like. Yet here I am walking in it...sitting in it...waiting in it. But I know that God is in it. That is where my peace comes in the chaos. I feel like laughing about the situation I am in. Because in the end if God is asking me to leave it is because he knows where I need to go...and that gives me a great amount of peace and joy.

Change

Beginning August 1st I will no longer have a job (currently speaking). In the last few weeks God has begun to help me see that it is time I leave. This is something that is hard and yet exciting all wrapped into one. There are many things I will miss about being where I am and working with the students I love. But on the other side I get to learn who I am apart from this place. It has become home and for that I feel blessed, but I can't stay here forever.

I have passions and gifts that God has given me that I can't use here and feel frustrated at times because I'm not sure how to use them here. But the problem is they are so much a part of me that in not using them I start to forget the dream of why I have them. I don't want to reach a place in my life when I can't dream any more. I want dreams that might come true and ones that probably never will.

God has been so faithful in helping me walk through this process of letting go. I sat with a friend and as we talked she was able to speak such truth into my heart and remind me of the things about myself I had lost sight of. She helped me talk through all the pieces and ways that God has been preparing me for this moment in my life. And she challenged me to live more boldly, to call the people I want to work for and ask them for a job. To embrace the adventure of leaving because that is a part of myself I don't always get to live out of.

So I begin the process of saying good-bye. Good-bye to the place that has given me tons of laughter and tears, cherished friends and hours of entertainment, a place that has challenged my mind, heart, and soul. A place where I learned who God is and how much He loves me. A place that has been preparing me for the next step as I waited for God's direction. Now it is time to take that step.