January 3, 2013

  • Hmmmmmmm -

    I don’t have much to say.  And while I am fairly certain that no one is still reading this, I am thinking about picking up the blog again because I need to be writing again.  If for no other reason than to do a better job of recording my life.  

    Facebook makes me tired these days.  It is fine for keeping up with people…but I miss the days of blogging consistently with girls that I care about and getting to share my heart while hearing theirs.  

    Maybe this is just a futile attempt to recapture something that will never really ever be the same again.

    Regardless – it felt good to log on here tonight.  Maybe I’ll go back and read some old posts.  Maybe not.

    But for what it’s worth…hello xanga world.  

March 22, 2011

  • I’ll be back…but not tonight.

    I traveled for the first time in months last week.  It was just like I remembered.  I am working on my attitude :)

    More later…just wanted to check in.

    happy

February 15, 2011

  • So many good things to share.  God is moving and I need to share. happy

    Where to start?  Lets go with school first.  I’ve been taking this corporate finance class online and it was KICKING MY TAIL.  I know that you all are rolling your eyes and saying to yourself ‘ummmm – she says this every.single.time.’… but no exaggeration – three weeks into the eight week class I was sitting on a 75% for the class.  And if I drop below a 73% I get a big fat ‘F’.  I was concerned to say the least.  I contacted my instructor, but had little hopes of help because I have had this same professor for a different class and had a really bad experience with him.  I was expecting nothing.  Turns out he is teaching the same class on Thursday nights, and he invited me to come sit in the class to see if it would help. 

    I was super reluctant, because I really had a hard time believing he would help at all given my last experience (it was THAT bad), but decided to go and try it out because I was that desperate.  Long story short I was totally wrong in my opinion of him (I love it when a first bad impression of someone is proven wrong).  Not only is he letting me take the rest of the class in person instead of online, but he gave me the opportunity to redo some of the work I had already turned in, and because of that I have already pulled my average up to 79% in a week!  :)   Add in the bonus of a new, GOOD relationship with my professor, and my stress level dropping DRAMATICALLY, and that is a LOT of answered prayer.  Yay!

    New topic.  Found out last week that I will be traveling again soon.  I was really struggling with it because so many people have been praying with me for God to provide a way out having to travel again and I really thought that He was going to make a way for that to happen.  I felt a little deflated and disappointed, but my equilibrium has been restored as God has been faithful to remind me that I just need to trust Him.  Just because He doesn’t work things out the way that I think would be best for me doesn’t mean that He isn’t working on my behalf, and doesn’t mean that He isn’t listening, and doesn’t mean that He loves me any less.  What it DOES mean is that I have another opportunity to trust and to learn more about His heart for me.  And that is pretty exciting. 

    Coming to that place has helped as I prepare to go back out. And today I actually started to get excited about some of my upcoming trips…I am going to get to see some pretty country and new places.  It’s all going to be okay.  It is a little amazing to me that I am excited, and I consider that excitement just another gift.  happy

    In addition to all of that goodness, I was contacted by a director in our group yesterday and she wants to sponsor me in a program at work designed to develop people that they identify as having leadership potential.  I have no idea what it will mean for the future, but it is cool to be noticed (especially with my limited amount of time actually IN the office with my current job) and identified as someone to participate in the program.  Humbling.  Cool.  Happy.

    Hmmmmm – what else? Last week, my friend Amber had the flu…With all the health/immunity issues that I have been having I was concerned about too much exposure, so when the forecast called for lots of snow last Tuesday, I called my friends John and Jane Ray and asked if I could come get snowed in at their house.  laughing  They are my family away from my biological family, and welcomed me with open arms.  Wednesday morning came and with it, Snowmageddon in Northwest Arkansas.  We had about 20 inches in Fayetteville…it was BEAUTIFUL.  I was nearly giddy with the snow and the time off of work, and my precious Ray family to spend so much time with. 

    We played games (Ligretto and Settlers of Catan), made cookies, bread and yummy soup, went sledding and traipsing about in the snow, laid about on the couches with coffee/tea by the fireplace, watched movies and Netflix…it was perfect, and relaxing and filled up my spirit and refreshed my tired body.  Like my own little mini retreat.  So many precious new memories with old friends…so good.

    Throughout the week I was having some abdominal discomfort, but was trying to ignore it because 1) I was snowed in and so was everyone else, and 2) I was hoping that it would go away on it’s own.  Well, I woke up in incredible pain in the wee hours of the morning.  I don’t remember hurting like that in my life – broken bones and surgeries included.  It was that bad.  I called my mom and asked her to pray, and texted some precious friends who I knew would pray and waited to see what would happen.  Jane woke up and asked why there was a bowl beside me on the couch (I had been throwing up and was afraid of not being able to make it to the bathroom in time), and eventually talked me into going to the doctor.  Except when we called the doctor they said to go to the ER because it sounded like it might be my appendix.  So she loaded me up and took me to the hospital.  Hours and lots of tests later it was determined that it wasn’t my appendix that was the source of the pain, but a ruptured cyst on my left ovary.  (haha – sorry if that is TMI) They sent me home to rest with some mega painkillers. 

    That may sound like a bad thing, but I have to tell you – while it isn’t a physical experience that I would like to repeat, it was just another testimony of God’s goodness.  Even in the midst of the pain, there was peace and I was overwhelmed by the love that I was showered with.  I knew people were praying, calling and texting to check on me…Jane stayed with me the whole time at the hospital – precious time that we rarely get together one on one.  Best of all, I wasn’t afraid.  It was one of those moments were I realized that all of those little moments of trust that I have been working on leading up to this week were building my trust muscles and that felt really good.  Not that I ‘have arrived’ by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m moving in the right direction, you know?  Awesome.

    Well…that’s pretty much it for now…sorry I ran long again.  I really should update more frequently.  Or be less wordy.

    Haha.  I’ll work that out later.

February 5, 2011

  • The rabbit trail that is my thought process tonight.

    Once again, my blog is going to be the venue that I use to write my way through some things. I think I may just go for random train of thought and work my way through….  This could potentially be wordy and roundabout.  I am warning you now winky.

    I tried to give blood at work today.  It was going to be my 24th time with the Ozark Community Blood Center, which meant that I got my 3 gallon pin from them.  Random to have a pin (To wear when? Do people randomly wear those pins out and about?) given to you for donating blood.  Even more odd that I felt pretty dang good about receiving said pin, even though I will never wear it and it will probably end up put in a drawer with other things that have weirdo sentimental value but no real place/space/home. 

    I don’t actually have a lot of those kinds of things anymore.  Moving three times in the last three and a half years has pared down the amount of ‘stuff’ that I have to that which can be contained to one room and a bit of storage.  I am grateful for the opportunity to simplify things, but if I think about it could get kind of depressed over how little I have to show for 35 years on this planet. So I just don’t think about that right now. No sense in it.  It only makes me grumpy and ungrateful.  And I don’t want to be ungrateful…in fact I fight it with every bit of me when I sense the slightest bit creeping in.  I am all too aware of how UNAWARE I can be of ungratefulness in my life…so I nip it when I recognize it, and pray that the people in my life will point it out when I DON’T recognize it.  That is one of the (many) reasons that I value my friends who are ‘truth-speakers’ so much.

    It has been snowing and icy here in NWA- so much so that I haven’t actually driven my car in the past four days.  It just hasn’t been necessary – one of the perks of living with someone who 1) works in the same building as me 2) has a huge truck with four wheel drive, and 3) isn’t afraid to use it or drive in the ice.  The only drawback is that when everyone else is calling in and having a legitimate excuse to not be at work for a few days, I have none.  So I am one of the few that has been there consistently this week….not that I really mind so much – I missed two days last week because I wasn’t feeling well, so….I guess it all evens out.  I can’t figure out if it is just that the storms have been that bad, or that NWA road crews just aren’t as equipped to deal with it as the crews back home. Probably not worth wasting too many brain cells on.  Suffice it to say – it’s been an adventure.

    I just realized that I never finished the donating blood story…(told you this was going to be the long way around)…long story short, I was rejected for the first time because I didn’t pass the blood iron levels needed for giving blood.  I had wondered, but was going to try anyway.  I was surprised at how disappointed I was to be turned away.  PLUS they finger-stuck me twice just to make sure.  Insult to injury.  Hah. 

    Listening to Watermark as I type this…their music never ceases to remind me of Aundrea.  Been missing her a lot lately.  When she died I was so afraid of forgetting things that I wanted desperately to remember.  I’ve never been super good at remembering things anyway – or maybe it is just the details…I tend to remember the way I FELT in a given situation or time period or whatever rather than the specific details of the event, and I wanted to hold on to some of those things as long as I could – so I started a journal specifically to write down things as I remembered them.  I knew it wouldn’t all be remembered at one time, so I created a place to put those memories as they came up.  I am really grateful for that now.  I still pull it out and add to it – or read it on those days when I miss her more. People used to tell me the last few years of our friendship that we sounded a lot alike. It wasn’t that our voices sounded the same, but that we had spent so much time together that a lot of our vernacular had fused and been adopted from each other.  I was really sad last year when I realized that my "Aundrea-ism’s" weren’t really there anymore.  Like I had to learn a new language because my best friend wasn’t there to interpret it anymore. Weird.  I know. It may not even make sense to anyone else…but all of that to say – I am grateful I started that particular journal because it holds those precious memories.  Someday I will make the scrapbook of all scrapbooks of our friendship.  Years of cards and pictures and letters and emails and memories/momentos.  I want to do it, but the thought is still a bit overwhelming, so I have yet to tackle it. Someday.

    Haha – total departure here – I just picked up my iPhone to see the name of the current song playing and after looking at the title, just chucked the phone onto the bed next to me.  Apparently that is something akin to hitting a shuffle button when you are playing music because it randomly made a shuffle type noise and began playing a new song. Interesting…that happened one other time, but I thought it was a fluke.  Hmmm – I guess it wasn’t.

    Reading in Psalms today I came across this verse in chapter 34, verse 18…

    "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." 

    I am sure I have read this verse before…probably multiple times. But today was a day that I needed to read it and be comforted.  The Lord has me in a phase of life that I have never been in before – and while that is not a bad thing, there are aspects that have left me broken and broken-hearted (in the best way possible I suppose, seeing as it is now that the Lord is beginning to take those pieces and mend them).  When I read this verse today it immediately brought to mind an image of me with all kinds of broken lines and shattered pieces (like a broken mirror that still retains it shape) – the fault lines left by the earthquake of life evident all over my body and spirit.  Superimposed over that image of me however, was this sense of the Lords presence drawing near to me and covering over all of those places.  I’m not explaining it well, but it was so comforting.  I’ve been reading a lot in Psalms lately and keep finding myself drawn to those verses that talk about Him being a shelter, a covering, a shield, etc.  I love the idea of Him hiding me away.  There have been so many times lately when my insides just feel bruised. How fantastic in those moments to be able to picture myself being tucked up under God’s ‘wing’ and held close to His heart.  Regardless of what I’ve done, or what’s been done to me – that is a safe place should I choose to stay there and not wiggle out. Still working on that.

    Doing this step study with Celebrate Recovery (CR) has brought a lot of this about.  We just finished the first of four study books and are now embarking on the second.  This one is all about making a ‘fearless moral inventory’ of our lives.  We haven’t really gotten into it at this point – only laid the groundwork for what is to come, so I don’t have a whole lot more to tell you about that right now. That was really only preface to the fact that I had an ‘Ah-ha’ moment this past week…(because everyone loves a good preface)

    At any rate – I have been struggling with being obedient to follow through on something that I have known for a while the Lord was asking me to do.  I knew what it would cost me emotionally, and on a lot of other levels, and so I resisted and put it off, and justified myself to death with reasons why it was okay to not do what I knew He was asking me to do.  I had talked to my CR sponsor about it last week and finally decided that I was ready to do it, and actually followed through with the obedient part. 

    And you know what?  It was every bit as horrible as I thought it was going to be.  It was gut-wrentchingly painful, and left me feeling desolate and more alone than I can ever remember feeling.  I was a little surprised to be quite honest, because I knew it was something He was asking me to do, and I suppose I thought that there would be this mad crazy supernatural peace about the whole thing…and there wasn’t.  At least not right away.  The next day, and this week – yes, absolutely. But that day?  Nope. I suppose I could try and dissect it to try and figure out if it was because I was refusing to be comforted or otherwise not doing something right to resist the grace offered in the moment, but there really isn’t a point at this juncture because this whole week has been an exercise in walking in His grace and peace.

    I am sure you are wondering how all of this relates to CR, and I am trying to get there – honestly…because I think that this is the very reason that I was compelled to write tonight.  I realized this last week in the aftermath of my ‘big’ decision to be obedient, that I have had a life-long fear of being alone.  Still working out the particulars (what is the root, what the Lord wants to do with it now that it is exposed, where to go from here, etc), but basically I looked back at the now glaringly obvious pattern of attaching myself to a specific person for a season throughout my life and never really having to be alone because I always had that ‘best friend’.  I was always really careful not to smother – I knew all too well that smothering and being possessive is never something desired in any kind of healthy relationship…so I was careful, but at the same time never could really imagine life without that BFF (or two or three).  When I started thinking about it last week I was able to track starting at age 6 specific people that I had leaned very heavily on during every single solitary moment of my memory.  Those friends were where I found my identity. (And yes – I DO realize what I just wrote)

    Fast forward to now.  I have been amazingly blessed with an amazing circle of women from all kinds of backgrounds, of various ages, with different tastes, diverse skill sets, a kaleidescope of personalities who all have one thing in common.  They love Jesus.  And for that I am so much more grateful than I can express in words. (yep – many of these friends are YOU who are actually reading this!)  Despite having this amazing group of women in my life that will speak God’s truth to me, pray for me and are only a phone call away – I am in what feels like a season of quietness and aloneness.  I don’t really like it to be quite honest.  I know I SHOULD, and I am doing my best to not resist what the Lord wants to do during this time, but there are plenty of times when the aloneness feels physically heavy and oppressive, and I don’t like it at all.  It is weird to have spent my whole life doing everything in my power to PREVENT being lonely or alone, and to now find myself in this space of having far more of both than I would prefer.  I have to fight my instinct to go and be and do in an attempt to fill in those spaces, when what I know I need to be doing (and am pleased to report is my response about 80% of the time as of the writing of this blog) is to consistently and persistently lean into the Lord and throw myself at Him when the lonely/aloneness overcomes me.

    I am quite happy to report that He has proven Himself faithful to show up with comfort, perspective and healing every time I have asked.  It’s been a roller-coaster to be sure. The grief contained in this past couple of weeks over what has been lost, my own failures, and other things of life continue to assault and roll over me like the ebb and flow of waves on the shore.  When those tides come and threaten to overcome me it is often a moment by moment struggle to turn to Him.  (Am I the only person in the world who can sometimes only say ‘Oh God…help’ in these moments?  It feels like I should at this point in my life be able to form better prayers…)  I know that I am not alone.  I know that this is a season.  I know that God is faithfully working things out in my life that I have never let Him touch before.  My constant prayer is that this pain will not be wasted….and He promised that it wouldn’t be if I let Him have it.  So there you have it.

    The fingers are starting to get tired, and my eyes are getting droopy which means that I probably need to sign off here for now. If you made it this far….wow.  Thanks. 

    Night all….

January 17, 2011

  • Miscellany

    So I colored my hair tonight.  In keeping with my Dave Ramsey new budgeting style (all the cool kids are doing it – haha), I have been working on cutting unnecessary expenses, and well – lets just say a ten dollar box of hair color is WAY cheaper than what I have been paying to have my hair done.  I haven’t done my own color in probably ten years, and to say that this made me nervous is a HUGE understatement.  Now that it is done however, it is okay….maybe not my exact preference, but not horrible either.  I can definitely deal with this on my way to being debt free. :)   Also, another benefit would be that I had forgotten how silky soft my hair feels after being colored out of a box though – definitely like that part!!

    I would take pictures, but – well actually, I am too lazy to do my hair at this point tonight and too vain to post a picture without having made some attempt at fixing myself up.  Haha – you see my dilemma…

    Classes started again this week.  This would be the semester to take Corporate Finance.  I haven’t ever done a finance class before, but I think I am really going to like it based on what I have read so far in my textbook.  The problems and homework are taking some time, but it feels like time well spent.  It isn’t easy, but it is fun (if that makes any sense at all!) and I think it is going to be super good for me in the long run.

    I was sitting in the cafeteria at work today, eating lunch and working on homework when a lady standing in line next to my table asked what class I was studying for.  Turns out she is in the same class, with the same instructor, only taking it in the classroom instead of online.  She gave me her name and told me to look her up if I ever wanted to talk about class stuff.   I was pretty excited to meet a fellow student, and so after lunch I went to look her up to send her an email and turns out she is a VP in our group.  This is cool on a lot of different levels – most notably because I am excited about having someone to talk school with who is in the same class as me.  I was also excited because I have been wanting to find a woman to mentor me at work (I have a mentor, but he works in a different part of the company and as a male really doesn’t have the same perspective) – I don’t know that I have even formed it into a thought out prayer, but it has been a desire of mine for some time.  I don’t want to assume that this will end up as that sort of relationship, but wouldn’t it be just like the Lord to do that for me…even without me outright asking?  ;)

    Lots of cool things have been going on over here.  I need to blog more.  I don’t feel like I have a lot of down time right now, and there are lots of demands on my time, but I want this record of life – I want to be better about recording the journey.  God is doing lots of cool stuff around here.

    Later…

January 5, 2011

  • Light and fluffy/fake? Or harsh and real?

    I had the best of intentions to keep this blog light and fluffy.  Who really wants to hear someone moan and gripe and complain all the time? Certainly not me.  Talk about Debbie Downer (wah-wah).  Growing up (insert steady stream of consciousness here) my mom had a friend from high school who would send out newsletters about once or twice a year to catch people up on her life.  Unfortunately all she could seem to focus on was the negative stuff.  You know – glass half full kind of pessimism…My parents would end up laughing their way through the letters because they were filled to the brim with all of the negative crap going on in her life (and seriously, my parents are some of the nicest people you will ever meet – they weren’t being ugly, I promise), and they would finally reach the point of laughing because there was just no other response to have…

     

    I have this serious fear that somehow I am going to end up like that friend.  I am constantly trying to figure out how to be real and not plastic (as in being honest with others and sharing struggles, rather than constantly faking that I have it all together), not walking in denial of the hurts, habits and hangups in my life while trying to balance all of the good things and not sound ALL.OF.THE.TIME like life sucks.  Make sense?  I don’t know how to find the middle ground, but desperately want to.  I want to be real, but not depressing.

     

    With all of that said, this is not light and fluffy feel good time.  Feel free to stop reading if you want.

     

    Truth is, I am really having hard time right now.  I am really tired of being alone.  I was doing okay with being single.  But now I am not.  And it sucks because in addition to the loneliness, I have to battle the tapes that continually play in my head when I feel like this.  The ones that say that I am not enough (not pretty enough, not thin enough, not feminine enough, not petite enough, not sweet enough, and so on…) or that I am too much (too loud, too emotional, too opinionated, too big, too independent, too DEPENDENT (yeah – figure that one out and get back to me), too standoffish, blah, blah, blah).  It is relentless, unforgiving, harsh, and only gets worse and worse .  Makes me want to do 2 things. 1)  Go back to old ways of self-destructive and harmful ways of coping (because it is what is familiar and comfortable) and 2) dig a hole to climb in and hide for a long time.

     

    I do have enough perspective to realize that these feelings come in cycles and that this too shall pass at some point.  I have the advantage of knowing what I NEED to do (seek the Lord, continually remind myself who I am in Christ, spend time in the Word, gather the support of people who love me, etc)…however, I am really, really tired and don’t even feel like fighting to follow through on those things.  (which starts a new tape-playing in my head about what a freaking cry-baby whinebag quitter I am…grrr)

     

    So there you go.  Pray if you will.  Hopefully you will have light and fluffy Havah back soon.

January 3, 2011

  • So here’s the deal, yo.

     

    My computer is old.  And xanga is being…well – I wanted to type a bad word there, but instead shall just say that it is being difficult and not at all user friendly for this particular user.

     

    (really trying to watch my mouth/guard my words.  I’ve been rather lax in that department for the last couple of years and am more than a little embarrassed at some of the things that I have allowed to slip out lately.  We could totally get into the whole ‘out of the abundance (or lack thereof) of the heart, the mouth speaks’…but that is too big a can of worms for me to open at 11pm.)

     

    ((Because of this recent trend in attempting to tame my tongue, I have adopted a new phrase.  If you hang with me for longer than – ohhhhhhh – 20 seconds – you are likely to hear me say ‘Oh dear’.  It is my new response to multiple situations.  Try it – it fits as a response for just about anything!  Revolutionary, I tell you))

     

    (((And because the rabbit trail above wasn’t quite long enough, I will add one more thing.  I have actually been saying ‘Oh dear’ so much that it has become a conditioned response and it is starting to irritate me when I hear myself say it.  HAH!  How is that for trying to do something good and having it bite you in the ole hiney?  Time to start looking for a new substitute catchall phrase I suppose.)))

     

    End rabbit trail.

     

    At any rate (picking up where I left off)…Consequently I cannot get pictures posted right now.

     

    Which is a serious bummer that I am going to have to figure out a way to work around, because I have got some fun memories to share and don’t want to miss out on the picture aspect.

     

    For now I am going to bed.  I think I may try to get up and get some movement in before I get ready for work (can’t call it exercise – that is too big a commitment right now).  We shall see what happens.  I have GOT to do something about how I look and feel.  Can’t handle it at all right now.

     

    Carry on then.  Talk to you all sooner rather than later…

January 1, 2011

  • 2011

    Happy New Year everyone.  This would be a good place probably to go back and rehash the good and bad of 2010, but I am WORN.OUT. just thinking about trying to do that, and it is late, and I had a couple of glasses of wine that are making me sleepy, and it is overwhelming to try and sum stuff up right now, SO.  For now I will just say Happy New Year. 

     

    I think I shall try to update with all the happy Christmas stuff tomorrow (haha – we shall see if that actually works out or not)….so much good stuff to share. 

     

    I don’t have any new years resolutions.  I tend to stink at the follow-through and then it just adds unnecessary guilt and pressure to my life, so I am not doing that to myself this year.  (is that terrible?  does that mean that I don’t have any goals?  because surely that is not true…Hmmmm – going to maybe need to think through this a bit more). 

     

    Seriously though – if I can make it through the year long step-study process with Celebrate Recovery this year I think I will feel like it has been a successful year :)   That may be a good start to my new years resolution list.

     

    Maybe blogging more should be on that list as well?  :)

December 8, 2010

  • The War Room

    So last week my entire team (all 6 of us) plus 30 some odd others from our department all got pulled into a conference room to work on a special project for the company.  It has pretty high priority at this point and they are throwing a lot of resources at this particular project in order to get it done within the timframe that they are asking.

    They decided (and it seems like it was the best choice now that I have seen it in action) to gather us all to work together in this conference room and have dubbed it a ‘War Room’.  Even if what I am doing is not so epic, I love the sound of working in a ‘War Room.’  Kinda makes me feel official and top secret – like a spy.  Haha.

    I have to say, I am a gaining skills as a design/CAD specialist faster than I could imagine and having a blast with the learning.  There are certainly some frustrating aspects of what we are being asked to do, but I am enjoying the ‘new-ness’ of it all, and the learning of new skills.  I’m a nerd like that. silly  The people around me sometime look at me like I am a freak of nature or alien-like because of my all too apparent delight in this project. Teehee.

    The really great thing about this project is that it means I will not have to travel again at LEAST until some point in February.  As some of you already know, I am asking everyone I know to pray that God will provide a way out of the current job that I am in so that I do not have to travel as much or at all.

    Please hear my heart in that – I am SO.GRATEFUL. for my current job and for the Lord providing for me to get a job here at the home office. When I accepted the job offer I knew that it was going to be for at least 18 months.  And if that is where God wants me until that time comittment is through, then I shall stay and give it 110%. 

    With that said, I really, really would prefer to not be traveling anymore.  I am feeling such a deep need to settle in and hunker down where I am at.  God is at work in my heart and life, but it all feel so precarious right now.  I have always hated to appear anything other than confident and competent, but right now my insides feel frail.  Weird that it actually doesn’t freak me out because it is a SUPER good place to be – and I know it.  But it is still fragile and I feel like I need to protect myself in different ways than I have in the past…and one of those ways is by trying to slow down a bit, breathe and be still.  I haven’t really gotten there yet, but the work travel feels like a HUGE obstacle.

    The only ways out of my current comittment would be 1) losing my job (not my preferred option because then I would be forced right back to St Louis and not able to stay here in NWA, which is where I really want to be right now), 2) stepping down from my salaried position into an hourly position (again, not preferred as I really can’t afford to lose my salary at this point), or 3) for them to approach me and ask me to step into a position higher than the one that I currently occupy.  Obviously I would choose number three, but I am not about to try controlling this…I have learned a lot of lessons here lately about trying to control things.  It doesn’t work and it makes me tired and cranky for starters.  There may be other options that I am just not seeing…and I am willing for the Lord to provide in whatever way He picks (wow, that makes me nervous to say out loud) – but the long and short of it is that I would really like to be done traveling so much for the time being.

    So there you have it.  I actually have a lot more stuff that I would rather be writing about, but I am starting to fall asleep, so it will have to wait to be written, or (more likely) forgotten :)

    Love you girls!!

November 22, 2010

  • I’m at my parents curled up on the couch for the night.

     

    I’ll be here in St Louis until next weekend.

     

    So grateful for the chance to spend time with my sisters.

     

    Everyone was super happy to see me.  They really, really like me here.

     

    So why am I so stressed about being here?

     

    (sigh)

     

    Oh help.