Annnnd ... Scene.

When the clock flips to A.M. at midnight tonight, a new season of life will begin. It's a change, for sure.

I go from exams. To Camp. To Madison. And now ... to real, bona fide, school. Lectures. Readings. Discussions. The papers, oh goodness, the papers. And it almost feels like I never left.

Just when you get used to one thing, it drifts right into the next.

I feel like I hardly got a handle on my summer. So many things went unsaid, so many letters went unwritten, so many opportunities just ... missed. I almost left Wautoma with a lot of regret. As incredible as my summer was, as jam-packed, adventurous, hilarious, spontaneous, fulfilling as it was, I still spent most of my summer brooding with a heavy, doubting heart. And that made it so, SO hard to leave. How could I leave, when things were just getting started? When I was finally ready to dive in headfirst?

I'm not sure what changed. All I know is that from the last Tuesday night to the last Thursday morning of the summer, I didn't do much sleeping, but I did do a lot of crying, and a lot of praying. Somewhere out on the middle of the lake, the morning I was to leave, things started to make sense. I'm not sure how, I'm not sure why, but I do know that God speaks to us in ways that we can't even begin to comprehend. He comforts us when nobody else has a clue, He points us in directions we wouldn't have gone on our own, and leads us to places of assurance that we never would have reached without Him.

It took a whole summer, but in those last hours, I was able to breath a sigh of relief, and know that it hadn't been for naught. The moments of despair and the moments of elation were blended together to create an experience that was entirely human. We're full of contradictions, us humans, but God (whatta Guy) is working through those experiences, working through those ups and downs, to draw us nearer to Him (even if we don't realize it) and bring His kingdom into fruition.

Whew. So that was my summer. It was a lot to learn.

Then I left there ... and life became BUSY.

I was in Canada ... (this picture was actually taken on the way back from Canada, at Pictured Rocks National Park in the Upper Penninsula)

And I was in Madison, cleaning the House of Horrors, complete with moldy walls, paint-stained floors, and the "Closet O' Piss." Even opposums. It's been hectic, to say the least. But, this crazy old house has brought a lot of fun opportunities to get to know my roommates better and learn some new skills and become just a wee bit more independent.

I was thinking about the concept of moving recently. I seem to do it quite a bit. I went from the dorms, to an apartment, to a house, with a few sandy cabins to fill the months in between. Each time, with the execption of Camp, I bring a little bit more STUFF with me. It's becoming quite annoying, to say the least. (Whenever I move, I always feel like I should become a minimalist, selling all my worldly possessions to the poor and living in a box, or something.) Each time, though, my place of residence becomes a little bit more like home, and it makes me all the more anxious to have a home of my own one day. Complete with cute dish sets and more Ikea furniture, naturally. On second thought, maybe minimalism isn't the way of life for me ...

I guess it reminds me of the road to heaven. We're here on this earth, gaining more and more "baggage," if you will. Not baggage like the bad kind that people talk about when they talk about relationships, but like, life experiences. We carry these around with us, day by day acquiring more, and we're supposed to be collecting the things that will make our earthly tents, our earthly bodies, a little bit more like our ultimate heavenly mansion and our glorified bodies. We're supposed to be acquiring more kindness, more compassion, more humility, and each day, we're supposed to be feeling a little bit closer to our heavenly residence, where we can finally snuggle up in front of the eternal fire on that Swedish-made couch with that classy heavenly throw-pillow.

It's a sloppy analogy, but when you spend a few hours a day caulking and painting in an unventilated basement, you have a lot of time to think.

Oh, you're not supposed to paint and caulk in an unventilated basement?

Oh. That explains a lot.

Grace and peace to you all in this new season of life!