Catching Up, Reflections and Randomness

So as a blog writer, I am totally fired. It's been a month-and-a-half since my last blog. Since I began this blog 4 years ago, I do believe this is the longest break between entries that I have ever had. It comes with good reason, as I have just been trying to survive an intense period of time of work and school, but still. I shall try to do a bit of catch up now and for the two of you who might still read this, have no fear - many more blogs are coming in the very near future! Why? Well, 3 weeks from tomorrow, I am leaving for Greece!!!

I am soooo excited to go, and even though I will be taking a class while there, we will be doing a ton of sightseeing, and I know the entire experience is going to be incredible. I can't wait to share pictures and stories and adventures with you, so be on the lookout for those posts beginning in June (the trip is June 6-22). I'm also thrilled because Nikki is going with me, and I know that the trip will be so awesome to be able to share it with her and other close friends from school.

School is going very well, although I must admit that it is exhausting. I took an extra class during the spring semester, which meant that for the last seven weeks of the semester, I was taking 3 classes at once. I was working at least 35 hours a week, in class 3 nights a week, and trying to get all of my homework/tests/projects/papers done during the times I was off. This should explain my absence from my blog! I survived, but barely. I am still trying to recover in a lot of ways. The only problem with attempting to recover is that 3 days after spring semester ended, I started my first summer class. It's my psychopathology class, which covers all of the disorders and is the hardest class I've had to this point. I love it, find it fascinating, but the entire class is taking place in five weeks, which puts a bit of a strain on getting things done in time. A few days after this class ends, I leave for Greece, and then I start my next summer class a few days after returning home. A little nutty, but I'm attempting to balance truly not having much time for breaks if I want to get everything done to taking needed breaks. This is why I am now blogging and may take the rest of the day off from schoolwork, even though I should spend the next 5 hours reading and/or writing. :)

Along with the school and work side of life, in recent days, my parents have also accepted a job for my dad in Nashville and will be moving in a few weeks, and I am having to decide whether or not to have surgery to remove my "containing nodules with suspicious cells" thyroid when I return from Greece. More details to come on all of that at some point, but for now, let me just say that I would appreciate your prayers for wisdom and balance and strength and bravery in pretty much all areas of life right now. I know I'm right where I am supposed to be, but it's also not easy. I'm in the process of learning how to extend grace to myself and appreciate what does get done, instead of fretting about what may or may not be.

For a random picture, and an attempt to break up a post with lots of words, here is a cute picture of my cat:

This was her sleeping on her pillow one morning. Thankfully she is very cute and usually makes me smile. :)

Finally, in a bit of reflection....I honestly don't notice dates much anymore, simply due to passage of time and healing and the fact that life does go on. However, I noticed what date it was today and had a kind of "oh yeah" moment. Otherwise it really would have passed me by as just another day. On May 15th four years ago, my divorce was finalized. I can't believe it's been that long. I can't believe what has happened in my life in the four years since. This blog is an amazing tale of adventures and the faithfulness of God as He has walked with me through this time. I am truly grateful for every moment.

I just finished a paper for my class that I had to write on my own pathology - what the issues are that I have battled and still struggle with and how they came to be. An exceptionally depressing paper to write if you look at it apart from Christ, but with hope...well, it changes everything. I'll share my conclusion of my paper here to end this blog because it sums up well these last four years. Thank you for walking this journey with me, for your support, love and encouragement and for praying for me. Many more entries to come soon, so stick around! :) And now for the conclusion...(the book quoted is "To Be Told" by Dan Allender)

In some ways, looking back over family history and examining your story in more detail can be a painful experience. It brings you face to face with the depth of the depravity of man. If I look simply at the sin, patterns, habits and defense mechanisms that have followed my family down through generations, it makes me sad to see how the choices we all make affect ourselves and those who come after us in ways we are unaware of and certainly do not intend. Thankfully, the story does not stop there. There is an answer that gives hope and allows for healing, and it is found in the person of Jesus Christ. Because of Him, it allows for this description of life to be true in our story: "It is about how we came to be who we are (Creation), how we lost ourselves (the Fall), what it means to discover the name God has written for us (redemption), and how the ending of our story reflects the great consummation of God’s story (His coming). Our plot is an encounter with the heartache and dreams and desires related to our personal tragedies – the events of our life that occur between fall and redemption and, ultimately, glorification” (Allender, 2005, p. 15). Thanks be to God that this paper and the contents within it are not the end. Even in my own journey and the journey of my family, God is at work healing and restoring and redeeming. As difficult as the hard times have been to walk through, and as difficult as some days still are and will be in future times of adversity, I am thankful God loved me enough to introduce me to myself and let me come face to face with the things that keep me the farthest from Him. In that introduction, He is walking with me through the healing process, and I am confident that the One who started this work in me will carry it out to its completion when all things will be made new.