Post With a Boring Title :)

Home is the sweetest place on earth. As soon as I walked off my plane in Baltimore a week ago, I felt the sweetness in the chilly fall air and damp from a recent rain. I-97 was wide open in the early morning, and even though it was 9:00 by the time mom and I reached the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, I have never felt like we had so much room on the road! And oh, that Chesapeake Bay! The water was as choppy as a stormy sea and the sky dark from rain clouds. Rather than a dreary grey, the sky was a deep, dark blue that highlighted the rich colors of the recently-rained on land, land that soaked up the water like a sponge and bloomed like a flower after a long, dry summer. The sight of that bay catches my breath every single time I see it after a long hiatus from home, and as soon as I am over the bridge, I am home on Delmarva again!

Life has slowed down significantly in pace, something I am very thankful for. To have my own room and a quiet house when I am alone is a blessing. That's not to say I haven't had plenty of things to do. In fact, I started working part-time at a daycare just two days after arriving home, with multiple other offers for side jobs. After struggling for a month to find adequate work, it is a relief to know there are plenty of opportunities for me to make enough to pay my bills. The thing to watch now is guarding my time so that I don't try to do too much. (I am thankful that I have a very concerned mother who knows my weaknesses and pushes me to keep focused in this way!)

Colorful

One more night at Door of Hope and one more day living in California! With my flight out of LAX leaving tomorrow night at nine, I have reached the end of a short journey through urban ministry and am about to begin an entirely new type of journey that takes me back to my roots for a while. I am ready to go!

My weekend was spent mostly with church people this weekend. I became very involved this year in a little church in Pasadena called Agape Christian Church. It is small in numbers but big in love, hence the name "agape" (a Greek word for "love" which describes the way God loves us completely and unconditionally, in spite of our rebellion against Him). I found a number of dear kindred spirits here this year: brothers and sisters, young and aged, people from various walks of life. How beautiful is the Body of Christ, so diverse in its components! Yet we are all one Body working together to see God's kingdom come, His one bride, and we serve one Savior. People from all over the world are represented at this church... I love learning from so many different kinds of people!

Goodbyes

When people ask me where I am from now, it takes a little longer than it used to to answer. "I live in southern California, but I grew up in Delaware and lived in Indiana for four years during college." Where is home? For the last eleven months home has been Door of Hope, where I work. For a week now, I have been telling people, "I'm moving home." Every place where I find myself making a life becomes home for the time I am there, but home will always be the place where I grew up, the place where my family is, the community that shaped me for the first 18 years of my life and makes up the core of me.

I am incredibly excited about moving back home to be with my family again. I think they are pretty psyched too, given my mom's squeals and running next door to tell her parents when I first told her on the phone. All week I have been preparing for the move: deciding what to keep, getting rid of my bed and selling my car, packing up my belongings in boxes to FedEx home, and having goodbye dinners...

A Solid Rock

Tonight the lyrics to that old hymn, "The Solid Rock" come to mind...

On Christ the solid rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand.

A co-worker of mine asked me today if I felt the earthquake we had around two in the morning. I can't even remember if it woke me up or not, but obviously it wasn't enough to be a big deal. Yet the circumstances I find myself in make me feel a little like my spirit is in an earthquake.

The End... Or Not

Tonight I imagine God looking down from heaven and telling me, My darling, why do you worry about what doesn't last? Don't you know that I created the universe itself and have infinite resources to provide your needs? Seek me, and everything else will happen just like it's supposed to, in my time.

With the end of my job as a TechMission after school program assistant this past Tuesday, I have to admit that I've done way more worrying about how everything is going to come together than taking it to the One who holds it all together. Just last week He taught me a very valuable lesson about trusting in Him rather than leaning on my own understanding of things, and look how quickly I forgot! He is a God of infinite grace and love to keep on gently bringing me back to His heart. I must tell about last week though, to give some perspective. I have been wanting to blog all week!