GOODNESS it’s been a while! Ha, the last time I wrote, I was anxious and excited about going home, and curled up here on my favorite, most comfy chair at home (where I’ve been for the past two weeks) with a piping hot cup of coffee, I’m getting anxious and excited to go back to school…well, getting there. :) So! I need to play catch up on this busy, crazy, and EXCITING past month and a half! I'd also like to say that I'm trying really hard to put pictures up on here, but it's just messing up like crazy and I'm so frustrated I'm about to sin...so I apologize for this long, pictureless post. :)
So, after feeling like I was the ONLY person at Grace that didn’t get to go home all semester, Curtis and I FINALLY got to go home for Thanksgiving. It was SO good to be back home with my sweet family for some short, but wonderful and much needed rest and good food… I would never know how much I would wish for it in the coming three weeks. When we got back to school, the COLD weather, HEAVY amounts of work, and PRESSURE of finals came, and oh, it CAME. Ugh, I can just remember thinking every day during that last week, “It’s SO close to being over…but it won’t be for so long!!!” That must have been one of the longest weeks of my life! But soon enough, Curtis and I were once again, rushing out of Winona Lake (this time, on the complete spur of the moment trying to beat the second fold of a huge ice storm) and making haste to White Sulphur Springs! As it always is, the Springs was beautiful, fun, full of food and rest and laughter and smiles and delightful friends. It was so exciting to see faces that I hadn’t seen in FOREVER, and faces that I had seen just that summer but hadn’t heard their voices in forever!
Definitely one of the high points of my break was getting to have the opportunity to catch up with one of my good friends and see how much God has been working in his life. For about the past year and a half to two years, I knew that he had really been struggling with his commitment to Jesus and pretty much just with life. Seeing him every once in a while during that time, he seemed to get worse each time until he hit rock bottom this summer. As we sat and talked, he told me how his life completely changed because this summer was the absolute worst and best period of time in his life. In every area of his life, terrible thing after terrible thing slammed into him one by one; his sister passed away in August, he and his best friend’s friendship blew up and they no longer talk, his youth pastor left his church, he was forced to stay at his school for an extra semester, his foster sister’s dad took her away, making the hope that his family would soon adopt her impossible…I mean there was quite a list. And then he began to talk with the most overwhelmingly evident joy about the point where he knew he needed to make the conscious, definite decision about who he was going to live for, what that meant, and how he was going to do it. He talked about how Jesus was teaching him all over again what it meant to be a Christian, how absolutely difficult it was, but how Jesus completely filled him and made him new again. Later that night I dissolved into tears as I watched and listened to him sing, “Your Love is Strong” by Jon Foreman at the top of his lungs during family hour. I’m so thankful that the Lord would let me see such an example of who He is and what He does to claim back His own.
The Springs brought another beautiful Christmas with my family, wonderful talks, sweet trips to Hebrews, downtown Bedford, and Little Barn, Christmas caroling, lucrative amounts of square dancing, surprise engagements, ringing in the new year by sharing Scripture with three of my favorite girls, a crazy trip across the border to go bowling in Cumberland, and the traditional lunch at Jean Bonnet on the last day.
But the fun didn’t stop when we went home to North Carolina! As always, going home means home cooked meals by the best cook in the world (don’t even try to argue with me), LOTS of games with the fam, hanging out with my sister, talks with my mom, and surgery! Ha! A couple of days after we got home, I got to get all six of my wisdom teeth taken out which led to a REALLY sore back and mouth the next day, LOTS of meds, lots of slurred speech and lots of applesauce and soup and…applesauce and soup! I still can’t talk or eat like I used to, but hopefully it won’t last too much longer. I finally got to experience a full yawn the other day…one that I didn’t have to stop because I couldn’t open my mouth that wide!
I keep trying to soak in these last moments of rest, these last opportunities for walks and talks, for curling up in a chair and journaling, for 2 hour naps in the middle of the day, for reading books that I’m not required to write a paper on, for hanging out with my siblings, for home cooked meals…all the while trying to prepare my mind to get back to writing papers and waking up at 6 and studying for exams and negative 14 degree weather and mentally preparing myself to be challenged in every way... and then I start thinking about chapel and my prayer class and seeing my friends and growing and changing and learning, and I get really excited! So, it’s a roller coaster in my mind…trying to prepare myself for ACTION, and setting my hope FULLY on the grace that will be brought to me at the revelation of Jesus Christ! Ahh! I’m just so excited to see what the Lord is going to do this semester! :)
