Life in Spain..

So it has been awhile since I've last written...the days have been busy and everyone in the house has managed to get sick for the last week except one. :(

Life here has started to settle down. I am starting to feel like I have a regular schedule and am enjoying the extra time I have for school and thinking...it amazes me how long you can stretch without really having to evaluate your life and where you're at. The amount of knowledge I have gained about myself in the last few weeks is far more than I expected to gain my entire time away. God has really been opening doors!

I was laughing the other day, thinking about how much I love to be around people and have a million things going on and how this last year, by God's gentle nudging or removing for me, how life had begun to slow down a little. I hated every minute of it. Not being busy, allowed time for thinking and realizing things that I didn't want to realize. Not being busy meant that for the first time, in a long time, I could see that I wasn't being who I was, but rather was being who I thought everyone else wanted me to be. The anger and bitterness towards friends reaction to the slow transformation into who I feel I am, built up and damaged most of those already fragile relationships. I felt very torn between being who I feel I am..broken and imperfect as that may be, and being the 'I can conquer the world in a day without anyone's help!' person that I had been trying to be the last few years. In the end, pretending was exhausting, so I opted for the first. My last few months in Colorado felt lonely and I had hit a point where my attempts to push God out, weren't working. I'm so thankful for His persistence.

It's been almost 4 weeks since I left Colorado. Since arriving in Spain, I have been more alone than I have ever been, and more alive than I knew possible. It's like God has reawakened a part of me, that only He knew existed. My anger towards the past and frustration towards myself has slowly started to leave and my resistance to grace and forgiveness has turned into worship and praise for those gifts that I am starting to receive. I'm in the middle of a country, who's language I don't know, familiar faces are few and far between and have more peace and joy than I've ever had. The level of intimacy God gives us, is incomprehensible. Changing my way of thinking and finding the joy in life before seeing the failure is revitalizing.

All in all, life is good and God is even greater. The family here continues to be wonderful. I've got lots of exciting travel coming up and people to visit. School work is busy but easier to understand now that I have more time. I, for the first time, am starting to figure out myself..and am excited for the adventure to continue.