Thanksgiving!

Things have lifted a bit since the last post - the light at the end of the tunnel of this semester is quite visible and it's making me happy. God also used a women's retreat at church to help me make some friends, which helps now and will hopefully do so more in the future. Things aren't perfect, but my perspective's a bit better most days.

Anyway, since it's Thanksgiving, I sat down and made a list (in as many colors of markers as I could find) of things I'm thankful to God for. And in no particular order, I thank God...

That he's made me His daughter, His friend, His bride

That the semester's almost done!

For a warm apartment, warm clothes, warm blankets, and warm socks

That the Phillies won the WORLD SERIES!

For the luxury to give back

For abundant food

For comfort

For giving me an amazing roommate I get along so well with, have no conflict with, and just the perfect fit of it - as it was totally in His hands

For an apartment where I can find refuge & beauty & trees, in a lovely, calm, & safe neighborhood

For an amazing church with a passionate people and a passionate preacher

For breaking me on the women's retreat

For women from the retreat

For friends from home who love and pray for and reach out to me

For my lab and my new friends here and being welcomed so quickly

For fellow Philly fans

For coordinating my classes so they overlap and reducing my workload

For supportive advisors

For peanut butter and jelly and CHEERIOS

That teaching is going well

For my loving, amazing family

That I get to go home in three weeks!

That I have somewhere to go for Thanksgiving

For my "family" in Savannah

For my teddy bear

For giving me good teaching positions

That my life is in His hands

For people who understand & love me

For toesocks & pigtails & stocking caps

For my SIT's

For an amazing summer at camp

For the leadership team at camp

For letting me SCUBA dive

For friends' happiness

For placing me where He has

For good memories

That I haven't gotten hurt or sick since moving here

For the ocean

For His love

FOR SNAILS & SLUGS & INVERTEBRATES!

For healing & delivering me

For the bike from Uncle Jim

For the cabinets & computer from Uncle Bob & Uncle Mark

For sanity

For a place to play flute & glorify the Lord

For a mission field

Fora good landlord

For making ends meet

For sleep and rest

For baby carrot zombies (see upcoming post)

For play

...and the list goes on. Really it out to be infinitely long as God is infinitely good...but you know the saying about trees and pens and oceans and ink and sky and parchment.


Happy Thanksgiving to all of you! May God bless you richly as you reflect upon His beautiful bounty!

la vie en gris

This is going to be a short post, so if you want more details, feel free to contact me.

I know I'm often a bit of a gloomy gus, and that probably influences this right now. But things either are not or do not seem to be going well right now. In a nutshell, I'm homesick, doing poorly in school, not plugging into community, and am questioning whether or not I'm even cut out to do this. The negative thinking enmeshed in all of this isn't entirely from me either, which I can see. In any case, if you've got some spare words when you're talking to God, if you wouldn't mind praying about it, that'd be great, because I don't currently see much of a prospect for getting myself out of this.

Thanks & love.