Idle and Blessed

This week has been different. The girls moved out of the apartment yesterday - the apartment I've been living in a good chunk of the summer. Which is super weird, especially now that Anna has a ring on her finger and wedding planning has been taken to a completely new level. Bridesmaid dresses. Flowers. Colors. Ohandbytheway our lives are never going to be simple again. So I've been a Nashville wanderer the past four days, sleeping wherever I can find a friend's hospitality to allow me. Working every afternoon. I saw Anna and Luke the other day, just long enough to hear the proposal story and try on the sparkly rock to see how it looks on my left hand. I talked to Sarah on the phone a couple days ago, too, and finally got caught up on the last month or two of life. I cannot express how much I needed to talk to that girl. It's like life is normal again after that, at least for a few hours. Connecting with someone deeply, knowing someone deeply, is insanely rare. Aren...

For people who believe in heaven, we Christians sure don't talk about it much. I'm starting to wonder if we even care about heaven at all. Think about it. When was the last time you made a decision based on the reality that in an unknown number of years, the universe as we know it will be made into something new? I personally can't remember the last time I factored my beliefs about heaven into my daily life. Except maybe to comfort someone grieving death, we seem to think the afterlife isn't relevant to us now. At least, that's true for me. But in the past few months my convictions about heaven have shifted, because I've been thinking a lot about what exactly the Bible says about it. I don't get credit for this, because it's all Cory's doing -- he just had to go and actually read the Bible and actually preach on what it says. :) And what it says is not what we think it says. This idea of an actual place called heaven is a new one. It's not found ...

I'm slowly wrapping my mind around the fact that I'm leaving in three weeks. Plane tickets are purchased, support cards mailed, travel supplies and gifts mostly bought, and internship meetings are done. I'm looking forward to teaching English this year, visiting the orphanage, speaking Russian, and deepening relationships. But in the meantime, I'm soaking up these weeks of summer. My time is split between Nashville and Spring Hill, working, friends, family, sun, and rest. These days won't last forever. In fact, they end in part on July 1, when I move into my first apartment in Nashville. I won't live at home anymore in the summers. It's a weird time in life to feel like a chapter is closing, since I'm in the middle of college and everything, but I feel like this is a huge change. A good one, an exciting one, but definitely a change. And I don't like change very much. I don't like how some of my friends are getting married, graduating, or moving a...

This morning I pulled last summer's prayer journal off the shelf. I don't know why, but I felt like I needed to read through it. As soon as I opened it I was immediately catapulted back in time to the day I left for my two months in Russia. June 4, 2010. Impossible to believe that was almost exactly a year ago. It all started to come back to me as I looked through the pages of that journal. The confidence I felt as I left. The prayers I prayed with confidence that God was about to fulfill them. The excitement and nervousness of traveling alone to a part of the world very difficult to get to. After a few pages, the entries turned to prayers for specific people and situations. My memories came back as snapshots in my brain - the two major meltdowns I had, getting my own little apartment in Kislovodsk, talking to Venera, riding in hot taxis to see orphaned children. Allergic reactions all the time. Language burier. Missing Fido, Target, home, friends. June 8, 2010: "I feel co...

I am so richly blessed. It feels like school ended ages ago, even though it's only been 2 weeks. This summer so far has been restless for me, and I feel like I'm in a season of life I've never had to deal with before. Unlike the summers of high school, I am not nestled into the routine of four school years with two months of free time in between, living at home because that's the only place to live and just waiting for high school to end. There are too many variables and options now to think about things that way. Unlike the summer between high school and college, I am not preparing for the big lifestyle shift of moving out, bonding with old friends one last time, or reminiscing about my ending childhood. Unlike last summer, I am not packing, traveling, and spending months across the globe. This summer there is no definition, at least not one I have found yet. That's not to say it's a bad thing, but I feel like there's nothing I'm working towards, nothin...

I'm officially done with my sophomore year of college. Exams are done, papers are done, friends are dispersed for the summer (or some for good), the dorm is empty, and my stuff is moved back into my room at home. Last year this time I had a 3-month visa to Russia and a suitcase already being packed. I was glad to know I'd never be a college freshman again, glad to know I was a fourth of the way done so I could just think about mission work. This year I'm stalling on the decision of whether or not to apply for an extended visa, sad to know I'll never be an underclassman again (well, kinda sad...), and amazed that I'm already half way done with undergrad. People say your freshman year is the most formative, but I have to disagree. My sophomore year was by far the most formative of the two. Thank goodness I met Micah early in the year, who told me it was normal to have a complete crisis of existence as a sophomore. There were times I wanted to transfer, times I wanted ...

There's an absolutely perfect and stunningly beautiful courtyard tucked away over by Freeman Hall that is impossible for humans to access because there is no door. There is NO DOOR. I suppose we are supposed to be content to see it through the windows. Maybe the biggest tragedy about Belmont. I am going to be homeless in August because I can't seem to work out an apartment situation. I have absolutely no idea what God is saying to me about this summer, about Russia. I want to go and yet feel hesitant and I am clueless about what to do. Sometimes life is kind of like being in Freeman Hall and looking out the window and seeing the perfect courtyard you can't get to.