I think I have a lot on my mind lately, but right now the only thing that is overriding these thoughts is that Kara comes to see me Thursday. This has been planned for weeks now, but today it just struck me as a very close, tangible reality; and I love it. I am so very ready to see her and regain a sense of real, deep, geniune familiarity with someone around here. No explanations, just me and that's it. I have people that I can easily call my best friends here in Searcy, but something about your oldest, dearest friends really do just have that special affect on a person. Plus, I want to show Kara my life here.

I don't know. Maybe I'll post more later. My thoughts are so scattered lately. It also probably doesn't help I only slept an hour last night but who knows.

All this flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am a mercenary and self seeking through and through;
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn,
Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;
I talk of love-a scholar's parrot may talk Greek-
But, self imprisoned, always end where I begin.

-C.S. Lewis

I feel very much like myself today.

The weather is beyond beautiful and perfect, so I'm wearing one of my long skirts and cardigans that Collin hates. I rode my bike around a lot. I also sat outside Midnight Oil for quite some time and wrote in my prayer journal, and just sat quietly and contently by myself. I felt very happy. This afternoon reminded me of my everyday life my last few years of school. It is very much like me to kill time at a coffee house and enjoy the afternoon by myself. Taking time out of my day to do that and either read, or write in my journal was almost demanded. I could not function without spending time doing either one of those things. It was just who I was to do that sort of thing. It feels good to be reminded of that. Somehow I got buried with distractions and obligations that I forgot who I was in some aspects. Shame on me, because it was so freeing to just sit around and geniunely feel like myself again by being in solitude.

I took a walk yesterday and saw a tree glorified with deep red leaves.

I had to stop and stare at it and bathe in the beauty of it for a while. I could not simply just pass it up. It was so beautiful and I cannot remember a recent time that nature has awed me so much. I've seen beautiful scenic areas, gardens, mountains and things of that nature, but it was just so refreshing to find the beauty in the mundane, to be surprised by such beauty in the midst of cement and neighborhoods. I am very thankful for that experience.


Today beauty in the smallest of things is being revealed to me. God is showing me His beauty in the way that I spend my alone time, in the turning of the seasons, and more significantly, my friends. I am learning more and more everyday what it is like to live in a community of people who geniunely love and want to take care of each other with no strings attached. We joke around about us being a family, but no, really, we are. I've never had such a close knit of people that literally spend every waking (and not waking) moment together solely because we enjoy each other that much. It is a beautiful thing to feel such comfort and security in relationships, and I am being blessed continually for it. I have never understood the meaning of living in community with each other until now. God is revealing Himself to me within this family. I love it.

I'm working on it. Sometimes it's hard to find a place here when you feel like your place is predestined for you. Harding sorta does that to people, but my group of friends have proven otherwise. Sometimes you have to dig and search before you find a group of geniune people, and I found them. And I am blessed. I am finding my own here and trying to allow God to lead me. I'm still working on it though, but I had a good day.

"He told me, a little latter, I should be living in community. He said I should have people around bugging me and getting under my skin because without people I could not grow-I could not grow in God, and I could not grow as human. We are born into families, he said, and we are needy at first as children because God wants us together, living among one another, not hiding ourselves under logs like fungus. You are not a fungus, he told me, you are a human, and you need other people in your life in order to be healthy."





Aaaaaamen.