Not-quite-Friday-5

I haven't posted on here in a looong, looong, time. I don't know that anyone will even read this now - If someone posts anew on the internet, and no one's around to see it, does it even exist? But I'm going to pretend, for a few weeks at least.

The last year+ has been insane. Lots of travel & lots of work, mixed with passing my qualifying exams and some good but tough spiritual refining, though more in the midst of the latter (and therefore feeling backsliding) than seeing its end product.

But that's not the point of this post. Talking to a dear friend earlier this week reminded me that my perspective (& relationship with the God who's more in control & loving than I think) will likely improve if I start focusing on "what's going good" instead of what's going poorly. She also does this Friday Fave Five thing (http://www.jaeyde.blogspot.com/) and I'm thinking maybe it'd be a good thing to start as well, so I HAVE to look for good things throughout the week. Though I may not stick to Fridays, 'cause, well...I don't want to today.

So the good things from this week:

1. The most AMAZING honeydew melon I've ever eaten. Oh. my. goodness. Honeydew's usually the kinda bland, overly sweet, unsettling-'cause-it's-green melon that's only used in fruit salads and Bath & Body Works products. But this week the grocery store had King of the West Honeydews on sale, and I'd even put off eating it for a few days because I wasn't super excited, but I had some tonight and it was deeeeeelicious. Best melon I've ever eaten, the first time in quite a while that I've really really really enjoyed what I was eating (probably first time since papaya + lime in Fiji). So good, I wish I could post some on here that you could taste.

2. I got to hang out with friends a bit this week; lunch with a friend from church, and then today taking a semi-boring research ethics course with friends from the department (mandatory course). It was nice with the friend from church to find she's struggling in some of the same ways with connecting at our church, and just talk in a meaningful way with someone here in Atlanta. Meaningful conversation seems hard to come by, though occassional phone calls with college/camp friends helps that a lot. And then hanging out with friends today (& tomorrow) during class helped with a bit of the loneliness I've been dealing with lately post-Fiji.

3. Because I was sitting still in a very chilly classroom today, I got to wear jeans and my purple high-top chucks. Just a little it-made-my-day thing :)

4. Similarly, it's been slightly cooler the last couple of days because the sun's been hiding a little bit more. So nice! Can't wait for good sleeping weather in a month!

5. My parents are awesome. A problem came up last night with roommate logistics (not terrible in and of itself...but the last straw of a pile of small things that have been breaking me down lately)...and my parents fielded a very tearful phone call home, helped me think things through a little and calm down, and offered to help with it however they could. I feel a little stupid being not-totally-independent at my age...but I'm very thankful for how great my parents are. There may be a feasible solution to this problem, too, at least in the short term...we'll see.

That's 5! Maybe tomorrow God will give me a cool bug to play with to round out the week :) (here's hoping!)