At a loss for profoundness

The funny thing about coming home after being away on a 10 month adventure is you feel a lot of pressure to have a really fantastic coming home post... haha, I've got nothing.

For me, it's been what's it's been.  A crazy first day of seeing all the familiar things again, trying to remember that the 10 1/2 months I spent away was not just a really long dream.  It's not as weird as I thought it would be because 10 months is not long enough to have forgotten all that you've known so well all your life... but it is strange that it isn't more strange coming back.

I didn't post much about the last week mostly for lack of time, but it was sweet.  Lots of good-byes.  Lots of well-wishing.  Lots of trying-not-to-think-too-hard-about-it moments.  It was sad to leave.  I think the hardest thing to process is having all of those memories so vividly on my mind all the while looking around me and being in a very different world again.

God has been so good to me this year.  If I were to try to recount it all I would need volumes and I'm sure that I can't even remember or understand all the ways he has guided, led, corrected, and taught me this past year.  What can I say?  Other than this is not the end of the adventure.  Like I told the teachers at Maranatha: I'm home again but I'm not really home until I reach my dwelling place with Christ.  Now there is a place that seems really far away sometimes.  But we're moving closer and on to the next phase of the journey.  Further up and further in as Christ leads.  How great his grace must continue to be to allow me to continue in this journey after so much failure!  To his name be the glory forever.

"I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind and therefore, I have hope:
Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; 
Great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, 'The Lord is my portion; therefore, I will wait for him.'"