Through Painted Deserts

“Roll the world around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful world, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.”

“ And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play.  My hope is that your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a women or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more then we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?”

“It feels again that we are leaving who we were, moving on into the people we will become, hopefully, people with some kind of answers, some kind of thing to believe that makes sense of beauty…”

-Out of the book I'm reading called “Through Painted Deserts” by Donald Miller.

Its strange how in such a short time away my perspective on different things has changed completely. It makes me wonder what other aspect of my life could transform if I were to change other pieces. Actually, I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. If I stay in the same place, what experiences would I miss? It doesn’t seem like a productive opinion to have because it seems like it will lead to never being satisfied in the present. I don’t want to be one of those people who is always looking ahead and never living in today. Always looking forward to the next adventure and never opening my eyes and realizing that getting there is part of it all.

Being here give me lots of time to myself to try and figure out where I want my life to head. It seems like a lot of pressure to me. At the end of my service I will essentially be able to restart everything. I will have  no job, no car, no apartment or things to consider besides how badly Mom will kill me if I move to Uganda or Egypt or…Costa Rica, will Wilbur like where we go and how will I explain to E that I’m not coming back quite yet . There will never be another time in my life where I will be as free as I am now. I hope I make the right choices. It makes me feel 6 years old trying to decide between the purple playdough and the bright pink. I can see the benefits of both choices but I can’t commit to just one.

Currently accepting advice. :-)