My life has a plan

I have finally made some decisions regarding my future that I am actually feeling good about!  Here's to acting like an actual grown up and making some real decisions about life.  I have officially decided to not go to Turkey right away.  I was originally planning on going as an intern with RMM in about a year for two years.  I was mostly feeling good about the decision, although I was regretting putting school on hold.  Well, after weeks and months of tormenting myself and driving myself crazy and going back and forth, trying to figure out what to do, and also after meetings with Carmal and Mim (they are good people) I have decided that I am not going to Turkey for now and will be attending college as soon as I can afford it.  I will be majoring in English and I am dang excited about it!  Yes, I am one of those nerds who actually enjoys school.  

I think that I have also decided to not begin school as soon as I am done with SEND at the end of this year.  The plan is to work for a semester and then begin in the fall of 2009.  My main reason for this is money.  I have none and I plan on continuing to reside in Columbus which means I will need to find a house/apartment, which means I will have to pay rent.  That is hard to do with no money.  I will also need a car and insurance and a lot of silly things that grown people need these days.  I also have big plans of traveling to Israel and Kenya next spring and summer, so I'll probably need a substantial amount of money for that as well.  

On a completely different note: I miss Spain.  There it is...wow, I really never thought I would say that.  Apparently it is normal to start missing a place about a year after returning, even if you never thought you would.  Whether it's normal or not, I don't really care, all I know is that it's nice.  It's nice that I can go back.  I'm not saying I definitely will, but it's nice to know that if I ever feel called to go there again, I can without too many reservations.  I realize that I'm mostly focusing on the positive.  I realize that if I do go back I will quickly remember the things that I hated that right now seem silly in my mind.  But still, there is a desire to go.  There is a desire to see people and to eat wonderful food and live the laid back lifestyle of a Spaniard again.  I would love to work with Kevin and Wendy and Pablo and Judy.  I would love to be able to work on my Spanish more.  I would really love to eat the wonderful bread and olive oil, and paella, and seafood, and juice, and so many things.  

The problem is that I want to do too many things.  Sometimes I think about the list of things that I want to do and I just feel overwhelmed, like I don't have nearly enough time to do all of them.  I know that's ridiculous, I am only 21 and have a long life ahead of me.  But I want to do all of them now.  I want to visit about 20 different countries in the next 5 years, which is completely impossible, because a) I don't just want to visit them, I want to live in each and every one and really get to know the language and culture; and b) I currently have about $300 and no chance of making a significant amount of money for the rest of the year.  Money is so depressing.  

I think I might be rambling at this point, which generally signifies that I should just stop typing and post.  I think that is what I shall do.  Then I shall go to bed.  The end.

I'm not very good at this.

So it turns out that I'm not very good at remembering to update this thing.  

Life lately has been busy but good.  This past weekend was the RMM prayer conference and I was helping Teresa cook for it all weekend.  It ended up going really well with only a few moments where Teresa started freaking out...don't worry, I reasoned with her and calmed her down.  We were in the kitchen pretty much all the time for about 2 days, needless to say, I was pretty exhausted by the end of the weekend.  I only got to sit in on one session during the conference and it was really good and very challenging.  I was kind of dreading going to a session and looking for a way to get out of it.  But I'm generally glad I went, even though it made me face some things in my life that I didn't really want to have to deal with.  It's good that I had to face those things and continue to, but to be honest I didn't really want to. 

There are a lot of things in my life right now that I am trying to avoid.  I don't really feel like going into detail about them, mostly there are just some decisions that need to be made that I don't want to make and some thought patterns that need to be changed that I don't know if I'm ready to deal with.  I kind of feel like a hypocrite most of the time these days, which I don't like, but I'm not sure how to change, or even if I'm ready to.  

On the up side, spring has officially hit Columbus and it is beautiful.  As much as I don't like hot weather, I always get excited when it starts getting warm on a consistent basis.  There is more energy in the air and it's nice to see people out and about on the streets....except of course when they sit on their front porch watching you plant flowers and dig up weeds.  That's kind of awkward and makes me feel very caucasian.  We have been planting flowers like crazy the past two days.  I'm realizing how much I like gardening.  That should make my mother proud.  We also planted some stuff in our garden today, which I am very excited about.  The best thing about summer by far is the wonderful food that is grown!    

I am officially ready for the activities of summer to start.  Our first City Challenge group comes in a month and I am quite excited about that, and also a little nervous.  I really need to figure some things out for outreach.  But once that first week of CC is through the six month teams will return and then we'll have City Challenge all summer and then the other teams will return and then the new training will start!  I am ready for more activity happen around the house, that is for sure. 

Well, I think that's about it for now.  Life is not terribly exciting, but it's generally good.  

Reflections on March

I realized suddenly that I haven't updated this thing in about a month, here I am again. Not that it's that important, I'm pretty sure nearly no one reads this.

Life has been good lately. We've been pretty busy at the house. Many exciting things have happened and I just keep hearing bits of good news all the time...life is exciting! This weekend is really busy because we have a group of women here from Shiloh, about 40ish in all, and we all have to preach our final sermons for VLI tomorrow morning, so between making food an cleaning and doing dishes and preparing sermons, today has been quite tiring and full.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. Mostly about God and my future and life in general. It's been good, I have been challenged. I would write more, but I'm kind of tired and nothing is coming to mind. What can you do, sometimes?

One thing that is very exciting right now is that this weekend marks the end of our month long "fast!" For anyone who doesn't know, the four of us staff have been living on a food budget of 25 dollars for the past month, as opposed to the usual 200 dollars. We did this out of a conversation about being rich Christians and decided to give the excess money away. It was a really good experience. We definitely all got very tired of eating nothing but carbs and protein, but we are all glad we did it. We were all amazed at how God provided for us during the month and we actually ate really well. We found quite a bit of meat in dumpsters and a few very generous friends shared from their bounty that they collect from dumpsters as well. A few health problems did result from our not eating many fruits or vegetables, namely that a few of us have come down with a bit of scurvy. So we're all taking our multivitamins and dosing up on the vitamin C as much as possible, so hopefully the scurvy will clear up soon and none of us will lose any teeth! So the fast is over on Sunday and we plan on celebrating...woo hoo! We are however, planning on continuing to use less of our budget than we have been every month and taking more from the dumpsters so that we can continue giving money away every month. It definitely helped us to see how well we have it in this country and how spoiled we are when it comes to variety in food choices.

Thoughts produced by Thomas Merton

I should currently be working on the sermon that I have to give at Preaching/Teaching tomorrow at VLI, but instead I'm taking a little "break" a.k.a I'm stuck and can't think about it anymore.

This morning I was reading a bit from Thoughts In Solitude by Thomas Merton. If you have not read it you should, because it is excellent and it makes one think a lot. I read chapter 12 this morning and was really challenged by it. The first paragraph reads,

"If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire."

The chapter goes on to talk about the need to renounce all desires that are not God. I'll give another quote because He says it better than I can.

"By renouncing the world we conquer the world, rise above it's multiplicity and recapitulate it in the simplicity of a love which finds all things in God.
This is what Jesus meant when He said that anyone who would save his life will lose it, and he who would lose his life, for the sake of God, would save it."

This really made me start thinking about what desires I have. I would say that my number one desire is to serve God and follow wherever He leads me. However, my life does not always reflect this. Often my other desires, whatever they may be, get in the way of this one main desire that I would say is foremost in my life. I'm not necessarily saying that desiring things is wrong, but what are my priorities? If someone who observes my life on a regular basis were to answer the question, "What, based on how you have seen Janell living, is her number one desire, her top priority?" What would they answer? What does the way I really live my life and operate day to day reveal about my priorities in life? What desires are getting in the way of my relationship with God? What end am I living for? Just something I'm thinking about.

Just Life

Today was an excellent day. I'm one of those people who is quite lazy, but every now and then I get in the mood to actually do something with my life. Today was one of those days. Basically I did a ton of laundry and organized the linen closet, which made me really happy with myself. I love organizing. I also finally decided to get some exercise, seeing how it was a warmish day. So Teresa and I set off on our bikes for the river. Once we got to the river we found all these wonderful bike trails that could take you all the way to campus. It was really exciting. We decided not to got to campus today but we did decide to try a new way home. That's when our troubles began. We rode for a while until the trail ended and then we rode some more until we came across High Street. Me, being the excellent navigator that I am, knew exactly which way to go and off we went. We rode for quite some time and didn't recognize anything, but I didn't think too much of it, I'm constantly stumbling upon neighborhoods that I've never been through when I bike around the city. After a while I started noticing a lot of student housing and thought it seemed odd, being so far away from campus and all, but on we rode. Finally I realized that we were indeed on campus and that I had forgotten that we crossed High Street to get to the river. So when we came upon High Street the first time I took off in the wrong direction because I thought we were on the other side of the street. Yeah, I pretty much felt like a moron. So we rode all the way back home and were very tired upon returning. But we did manage to get all our exercise in for the week and I enjoyed a fabulous bike ride, so yay for that.

On a more serious note, I am feeling frustrated. I feel like I know exactly what I want to do with my life, or at least the next few years. I have logically thought it out and I have figured out the best solution, the best plan. Why is this a problem? Because apparently God does not always work according to my logic. Apparently He has a better plan that I just don't understand. The question in my mind for the past few weeks is do I go to school or do I go to Turkey? Since I got home from Turkey I have been leaning towards school. It's not that I don't want to go to Turkey, I do very much. It's more that I don't want to go right now and I think going to school first makes more sense. But I just can't get over the feeling that school is not what I'm supposed to be doing. I can't get over the feeling that I'm supposed to go to Turkey, no matter what my logic may be. This is frustrating for me. I like have control, I don't like my life being out of my hands. I have trust issues. No matter how many times I say I trust God, it's still a really hard thing for me to do. So what's going to happen? I honestly don't have a clue.

Home again, again

I have returned from my travels to Costa Rica. Thus ends the traveling phase in my life for a while, I would imagine. Unless of course someone decides to donate large amounts of money to me!
Costa Rica was fabulous. I think that I enjoyed Turkey more, but it is a wonderful place. The weather was unbeatable. I love seasons, but I could seriously get used to Costa Rican weather year round. The wedding was nice, Ken is now officially married, twice. The food was great. And the views were incredible. The only qualm I have about the trip is that I felt like a major tourist the whole time. First of all we stayed in what I like to call the Rich White Person Compound. Second of all we did a tour. In general I try to avoid tours when I travel, but I must admit that this one was quite nice and we saw a lot of good things for the price that was paid. In general it was hard to blend in when walking around downtown San Jose with a group of about 16 gringos. I did rather enjoy practicing my Spanish, and I look forward to many more trips in the future...maybe even one in a year with the staff...but I guess I'll see what happens.

Hmmm, that last paragraph seems awfully disjointed....but what can you do, sometimes?

This Cannot Go On

I am currently finding myself in an annoying but necessary phase of life. The phase of life where I suddenly realize that everything I am doing is wrong. I've been sensing it for a while now, particularly in the way I've been relating to God, but up until about a week ago I felt no need for real change, I guess I supposed that sooner or later everything would work out again. But then it hit me; I am the problem, I need to change.

Like I said, I've been feeling it for a while, but have somehow avoided doing anything about it. Then I went to Turkey, had a great two weeks, and came home a very confused person. I had my life all planned out, or at least the next five years, and suddenly I was left with nothing, no plans, no clue. Then I had a discussion with some people and the result was me realizing that, like I said before, I am doing everything wrong. Things have to change.

So what is "everything," one may ask. Well where do I start. First of all there is my relationship with God. I've suddenly realized that I have been trying to boil a relationship down to a formula. If I do this and this and pray and read my Bible I will be fine. I don't know what I was thinking. I would never try to keep a relationship with anyone else going by talking to them for a few minutes everyday about myself and then reading about things that they have done. That's completely ridiculous. I also feel like I don't really know how to live anymore. My priorities are screwed up. I'm living to validate myself, I'm living for other people, for their praise and acceptance. This is simply no way to live. There are many other aspects of my life that need to change, I don't really feel like going into all of them. There are some habits that need to be broken and some patterns of thought that need to stop.

So what am I doing about all of this? Well the first step was/is depression, a feeling of being totally overwhelmed, and despair. I think I'm pretty much over this phase, at least I hope so. I was helped out by a good discussion with someone who has gone through a similar phase recently and is, in some ways, still dealing with it, and also by the realization that all is not lost. I am not back at square one in my relationship with God. Sure, I may have gotten off track, but there is still a foundation there, still core beliefs and convictions that are not going away. This gives me hope. So as for the rest of my plan: well, I know it will be a long road. One does not change one's way of thinking and living over night. I realize that I will not wake up in the morning a completely changed person. Everything will not fix itself. So I guess that I will pray a lot, and I will read a lot of books that a friend recommended, and I will try to change some thought patterns, who knows what else. All I know is that God is good and that I'm starting a long journey which will end in a better place.

Home again, home again

Ang and I arrived back in the States on Monday evening and I've been attempting to get caught up on life in the past few days. VLI on Tuesday evening was a bit daunting, but in general it was pretty interesting...except when 9:30 hit and I suddenly became very tired and struggled to keep my eyes open for the last hour of class. I've also gone over to The Home a few times since being home where we have done minimal work and had much fun with the wheelchairs. Let's just say that I should have very strong arms by the time I'm done with this place.

To wrap up my time in Turkey...well, it was pretty much two of the best weeks of my life. Much wonderful food was consumed, many sights were seen, many good times were had, a little bit of Turkish was learned, much money was spent, and more glasses of cay were consumed than I can even count. As much as I loved my time there I came home more confused about my future in Turkey than when I left. I loved the country and would love to spend some years of my life there, but all of the logistics are really confusing me. When would I go? Where would I go? How would I go? These are the questions that have my head spinning. I know that God has a plan and all I have to do is trust Him, but it would be so much easier if He would let me in on it so I can do a little preparing.

Oh, and about pictures of my trip, the chances of me putting pictures on here are slim, due to my extreme laziness; however, if you are interested in viewing more pictures than you can possibly care about feel free to check out my picasa site. I only have pictures from Istanbul on there currently, but I'm working on getting the ones from Gaziantep, Urfa, Haran, Mardin, and Adana on there. Enjoy!

Merhaba

Well, so far Turkey has been pretty much fantastic. Our trip started out pretty shakily with many problems in airports and such. A short summary of our travels goes like this: our flight from Columbus to Detroit was delayed 2 hours so we were rerouted to Memphis and didn't end up leaving Columbus until 2 ish hours after we were supposed to. Then our flight to Memphis was delayed even more and we landed in Memphis 15 minutes before our flight to Amsterdam was to leave...then we taxied for 10 minutes while Ang and I became very nervous. When we got off the plane a lady was waiting to tell us where to go and when we said Amsterdam she responded with ''Oh Lord, run...gate 47.'' I looked up to see gate 3 and stared running like crazy. We arrived at our gate with one minute to spare and got on the plane very out of breath. We had an unexpected 10 hour layover in Amsterdam, so we ventured on into the city for a while. We finally arrived in Istanbul at 1:30 am on the 2nd, 12 hours after we were originally supposed to arrive. All in all a very exciting trip to say the least.

So far our time in Istanbul has been amazing. Joanna is fantastic and pretty much a master of the Turkish language...pretty much everyone here loves her because she's so good at Turkish and she gets us good prices on things! We have done exciting things like see the Ayasofya, Topkapı Palace, the Grand Bazaar and other touristy things. We met some friends of Joanna from the university, we ate wonderful Turkish food and have drunk rakı and efes, and we have enjoyed the wonders of the nargile. We only have 2 more days in the city before we head for the southeast and we are trying to cram as much fun in as possible. So, until later.