thoughts brought on by a new passport.......

So I got my new passport today, and it made me so so very excited. I can't believe I am actually getting to go to Scotland... again. God is so Good

I couldn't help but think of my first trip to Scotland today. And think of how it taught me to be more brave and more myself. In a way it made going to CCU a possibility. And now I sit here a CCU student about to go again in 33 days. It's really really funny how God works.

I also can't help but dream of where this passport will take me. It is the passport I will use fro my age now to 31, and I can't help but think this one will probably have the most stamps in it. And that is so so very exciting.

Just to let everyone know, when I got my passport I jumped up and down in the mail room.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others, we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as ourselves. The Cost of Discipleship

I can no longer condemn or hate a brother [or sister] for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me is transformed through intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died. Life Together

The followers of Christ have been called to peace. . . . And they must not only have peace but also make it. And to that end they renounce all violence and tumult. In the cause of Christ nothing is to be gained by such methods. . . . His disciples keep the peace by choosing to endure suffering themselves rather than inflict it on others. They maintain fellowship where others would break it off. They renounce hatred and wrong. In so doing they over-come evil with good, and establish the peace of God in the midst of a world of war and hate. The Cost of Discipleship

a honest post..

So I love Colorado, to be honest I think it's my favorite place I have ever lived and I have quite a lot to choose from. But there's part of me deep inside that occasionally misses Georgia. And I wonder why. I love Colorado, to the point where I feel sometimes like it's the perfect place for me to live. and to be honest it wasn't until the last 4 years that Cobb County even felt like home.And then I went to shorter and never felt so out of place in the south in my life.

I think more than anything is no matter your feeling for a place, the longer you live somewhere, the more it becomes your home. The environment you are in always shapes what you become, and this environment includes culture. The people you are surrounded by , even if there not friends, become your community. And well this takes time, lots of time, it defiantly took time for this to happen in Georgia. And i guess part of me is tired of the process, the process of being new and becoming not new.
But then I remember how rewarding it is. I feel like I have people in both Georgia, and New Jersey, who are like a second family and I know will always be part of my life even if it is only memories. I'm starting to feel this way about Colorado. I'm ready to feel all the way like Colorado is a home, and not just an awesomely fantastic place I get to live

by the way just to let everyone know this is no way a reflection on CCU, I actually thought a couple time this week about how so much of what I dreamed CCU is like, is really true