It's the Little Things

Here are some unsolicited thoughts on life that I have.  Take it as you wish :)

-True friends are the people who you can make laugh and who make you laugh.  Laugh often.  

-Pancakes late at night are always a good idea.  The waitress will probably give you the smiley face kids pancake if you ask, even if you are 21 instead of 12 or under.

-Encouraging others will probably encourage you at least as much as it encourages the other person.  Not that it's a reason to do so, but joy comes in looking away from ourselves.

-It's often what we don't expect that delights us the most.  Sometimes its good to let it happen and not burden ourselves with worrying about every detail.  I can panic about the future or enjoy the present.  There is a time for both of these things, but the second one is really important, especially right now.

-Sometimes God brings us through painful things to grow us, and the effects of that pain and growth can't always be seen right away.

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." --Ezekiel 36:26

All that's dead can be and IS reborn.  Beauty comes from ashes.

I'm Not Who I Was

One of the marketing slogans for my study abroad organization is "Your World: Redefined," referring to different aspects of life that are redefined abroad, such as public transportation, lunch time, weekends, or whatever it may be.  This led to many jokes in my program, mostly around varying Chinese standards of bathroom cleanliness.  What IES can't tell you, is how true this may actually be, for more than bathrooms, etiquette, and sense of time.

I'm not who I was.

The hardest part of my abroad journey was coming back to Hope and realizing that the place that I left, and the person that I was then are gone and that they aren't coming back.  Reality set in after the initial face of running and screaming and hugging and unfulfilled (and fulfilled) promises for coffee dates.  My stories weren't dramatic in the way some people may have expected.  I could barely articulate anything.

Since September, I've gone through periods of intensely desiring pre-China Karen.  She seemed so much more confidant of who she was and where her life was going.  For me, coming home from abroad also aligned nicely with the beginning of the senior questioning, "So what are you actually going to do with your life like immediately in the next year when everything you've known for the last four years changes?"  The time that being at college was all that mattered is gone.  The kicker is that I had an answer to this question before I went to China, and then that got turned on its face.  I don't know who I am or what I'm made to do anymore.  (This is an exaggeration.  I have ideas and things that I'm pursuing right now, but these questions are still pressing).

I've spent way too much time and energy wishing for things to be different.  Also, just because things aren't the way I want them to be doesn't mean that I've done something wrong to deserve it.  This is severely limiting God's sovereignty and loving character.

I'm not going to have any huge ideas of what I'm doing for the next few years.  The feeling of unsettled turbulence probably isn't going to get significantly better, I'll just figure things out a little at a time.  However, I have the choice to be upset about it or not.  I can dig in my heels and protest leaving my home sweet Hope, or I can look back at the incredibly ways God has proven His grace, sovereignty and tendency to blow my expectations out of the water, and know that He has the next thing coming, and that right now is a time to trust Him.

God replaces the anxiety, the doubt with desire for more of who He is.  With His presence comes peace and contentment.  (Philippians 4)

I'm not who I was, and I can be upset about it or I can move forward with it, trusting that I'm being refined, for good even if it's at an alarming rate.  My life changed so utterly completely that it's taken awhile to figure it all out.  I finished a journal recently, and on the last page I wrote down a few things that I'm going to leave behind in that journal.  I closed the book, and made the choice not to let myself by held captive by those lies anymore.  Life with God is an adventure, and I'm thankful for where I've been and who it's making me to be.