REST FOR THE WEARY

The last couple of days have been LONG, and I'm just getting ready to unwind, and enjoy the last month of summer, and the short-lived freedom I'll have from academics and required readings and graded reports. Only one more month to read travel essays at will, go to the palm theater, surf, and hang out with Chris. After that, its no more mid-day barbeques, SLO farmer's market, Pete's coffee, frozen yogurt, free tacos, or Isaiah. I realize more and more about how unfair and unrealistic my expectations are, of friendships and relationships and love and life, and how I really am SO blessed. I have things really good.

Kristin left at 3 a.m. this morning to start her drive to Tennessee (Why 3 a.m.? well, ask Shaun Johnson), and we stayed up until 1 a.m. playing Rock Band, where our eyes were crying from staring at the screen, but smiles plastered to our faces, because it might just be the best game EVER.

We went surfing in the afternoon with Chris, Adam, and Cory, and after, rushed, with salty hair, to a dressed up Italian dinner to celebrate the birthdays of Sammy & Jerry. And I realize, what I first expected to be a boring desk job, turned into a whole new experience of feeling once again connected to my church, which is a wonderful feeling and fortunate occurrence in which I am so grateful for.

I was talking to Alane on the phone last week, about how discouraged I felt. About how long and drawn out this "transition" period feels, of uncertainty about the future, about spirituality, about how all of the things I was once so certain of wanting are beginning to lose their luster. That it's been over a year, and I still don't have clarity on God's will, and how more and more, I'm beginning to feel like that phrase is just "fluff". And how much easier it would be if everything was "cut" and "dry" and "black" and "white", and how boring and spiritless and inane life would be without these gray areas. Moments will occur, where I'll feel convicted that everything in me is digressing, but when I look, and open my heart, I realize that seeking truth is never easy, and always worth it.

You pursue the terrible beauties of fear and hope. Your friends cannot help you.
I found this quote in the inside of the journal I had when I was 16. It came written on a symbol for a dingbat font called MA. Maybe it's a bit quixotic, but I still think about it all the time.