Well then.

It's about time I posted an update on my adventures here in, (...at the moment, quite drizzly) California!

It's also high time I posted a proper "Thank you!" to those who have been supporting me through gifts, surprises, prayers, happy thoughts and encouraging words.

How do you properly thank people who have come alongside you and helped usher you into the first steps of finally reaching your destiny? I'm sure it's possible, but in order to do so, I might need to develop a new lexicon of superlatives. At this point in recent days, I have often simply resorted to dancing out what I'm trying to say. I've been that happy and blessed.

Everything happens so fast here. Four days out of the week, for most of the day, I have my mind pounded full of the most amazing, life-changing information and then am immediately activated and challenged to practice what I've been taught. And then there is like two hours of homework, and group meetings, and volunteer opportunities and personal project time. (...and if you're anything like me, you leave it all until a partial day off like today...)

What I'm learning most is that God is good and in a good mood. I realize now that He's not looking at me in disappointment. WHAT?!?! I know. I KNOW, right?

He loves me in my mess and is extending a hand to help me out of it. Rock on.

I'm also realizing that it is okay to have questions and live with mystery. Several people around me have lost parents and children in the past few weeks, (or years), some to diseases we see God heal here on a regular basis. If God is good and these were good people, why would He let that happen? Why would a good God allow things that happened to me, happen to me? Why would He radically bless some with a healing miracle or financial provision, and others not?

These are the questions I, and we as a class of leaders-in-training tackle every day, not just in class, but in our daily lives.

Here are some things I've learned as I've pondered these questions:

Be thankful for what you have today. Many of us at BSSM are experiencing extreme financial strain and hardship. Some are living in trailers without electricity and running water; some are looking for work in a town with no industry and a saturated job market, and simply not finding it. At times, circumstances can seem absolutely overwhelming and completely overshadow the awesomeness we are being presented with every day.

So I've learned to be thankful. Because in the midst of the strain and hardship, miracles are springing up out of nowhere. Like for the friend who had nothing left and a friend came to her door with $1000. Like me, who had no idea where rent was coming from and 2 hours later, someone called with the solution to my dilemma. I'm also coming to terms with the fact that God is mysterious and it's fun to ask questions and have some answered and some not, but to keep exploring.

I've also learned that Redding takes money from the state to re-settle people who have been newly released from prison, namely sex offenders. Not one person in our class has been harmed! In spite of a friend's car having been randomly shot at, and another's vandalized, we're all okay. And it kind of reminds me of living in Chicago...without direct access to the Louboutin boutique, of course. So I'm thankful for that...minus the Louboutin part...

Before you get bored and go back to the news feed, here is the other thing I'm learning. (...and for me this is important, though it has probably already occurred to you...)

We need each other.

Along with so many others, I grew up very independently, rather isolated, always looking out for myself. Though I learned very useful things from those experiences, I've also learned that I need to reshape the way I think about community. Community is absolutely essential for reaching one's destiny and true calling in life. It's also just much more fun (...and stretching, in the best possible way), to live in community than outside or without it.

I'm so thankful to be in the midst of a wonderful family here in Redding-- my RG, my small group, my roommate, my soon-to-be travel teams, my fellow track members. It is an absolute delight and privilege to be invited into the process of helping them as they are in process and I am daily blown away by the way each of them carries something I need...a piece to the puzzle of my life wherein I only saw a gap, and never dreamed it needed to be filled by anything, if that makes any sense...

So do I miss Chicago and all of my wonderful friends and family in all places of the earth? YES!!! And this experience is highlighting for me even more so, that you are all so precious. (...look that word up...it has a lot of nuances and I quite like it!)

Thank you all for believing in me and helping me to come to this place.

You are awesome.

Cheers and a hug!