a new season...

the seasons are changing. as the sun sets a little quicker and the wind bites a little harder, i can feel a change creeping up. yesterday i turned 24. today i decided i was moving into a bigger apartment. my life is quickly moving into a new season as well.

i've been here in cali for about a full four months. i have a steady job, well two actually. i have a church community. i have new friends. and i'm ready to start settling in. i've been living in a one bedroom apartment with a friend, and it's been perfect. but now that i can afford my own room and i have a future here in san diego, i am ready to settle into some place i can call home. this one bedroom apartment has served its purpose and now it's time to move into some place where i can buy furniture, paint the walls, and put a welcome home mat on the front step. as i close this time of transition and move into a more permanent time, i can't help but think of how faithful god has been to me. he has provided me with all of this...support from my family to up and move to cali, an apartment in an abrupt week, a job (after much searching), and new friends. i feel so blessed to be in this place.

my desire right now is to live in a community house. i really want to live with 4 or so people and form a little family of our own. i want a place where we can eat together and cry together and laugh together. i want to live communally. life is not meant to live alone and i think community is worth all the pain that it sometimes creates. i've said this before...especially while i was in peru...community is hard but it's so worth fighting for. i want a community. (and my own room) ;)

leave it up to a glass of wine and a chick flick

i had a great day today. i'm finally feeling like myself again. my head was not as clouded as it has been lately. i've been playing catch-up at work since i was sick last week and i've been really stressed out. today i got a lot done and was able to relax a bit. tonight was a very good night for me. i had dinner and wine with my best friend jenna. we sat and talked, and it was quiet and peaceful. i have needed a break from people this week, so it was good just to 'be'. then we grabbed chai and went to a girly movie--Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

the movie was good. it made me so thankful for my girlfriends. as i get older and my friends (both guys and girls) get married, i am realizing how crucial girlfriends are. you can't have guy friends when you get married so it's really important to invest in relationships with the same sex because those relationships remain. i am so blessed to have the friends i have.

after a long, frustrating weekend, tonight was just what i needed. this weekend didn't go quite as planned and it really opened my eyes to a lot. i felt my desperate need for god this weekend. i was reminded that i can only find satisfaction in him. after being so busy for so long, i was forced to slow down this weekend. i realized that i had stopped doing things i love...like running, writing, spending time in deep conversation, reading, etc. it was good to just slow down and re-evaluate my life right now. because i had gotten so busy, i was quickly becoming an unhappy person. but tonight, at many points, i was just deeply satisfied. through out dinner and the movie i was just plain happy. happy to be where i'm at. happy to be who i am. happy to be alive. happy to be loved by the god of the universe. i somehow lost myself last month and i'm slowly working on finding myself once again. thank god for a glass of wine and a chick flick! and grace...we can't forget that. god is good and so merciful.