Summertime

I feel lost. Like part of me is missing. My little sister (who just happens to be taller than me) left on Sunday to go to Baltimore. As I sit wrtitting this she is hovering somewhere over us on her way to Singapore where she will arrive sometime tomorrow morning. Jen is on her way to Papua New Guinea with our great aunt Dot. She will be gone for 6 weeks.

I miss her already. It's weird going to bed at night and her not being there. I keep thinking that I'll just pretend she's at camp, but then she'll call us and tell us what a great time she's having. Then I remember that she's not at camp, but on her way to a place on the exact opposite side of the earth.

She will have a wonderful time. She will meet new people and have experiences that will help define her for the rest of her life and she will grow as a person and in her walk with Christ. She will never forget this for the rest of her life. But for me, this marks a milestone. We are officially growing up. I am looking at apartments, she has a passport and is somewhere that I have never been before,and probably never will be.

We are slowly creating our own lives that are not as intertwined as closely as they once were. But I've realized that she means more to me than I ever imagined. She is my sister. We are bound together for better or for worst. But, more importantly, to me, we choose to be bound and I am glad she is having this experience, and I am proud of the person she is becoming.

WooHoo

I am unoffically a student of USF's School of Nursing!!!! I got the letter from the people that process the paperwork with all of the paperwork that has to be filled out. Shot records, do you have insurance, can you be cleared medically? etc. So, the first challenge is to get all of this filled out, sent in, and to blunder my way in to Tampa for orientation the first day I get back from LA. So, I'm just waiting for the Offically, pretty letter that will be framed on my wall.

Lukewarm

We went on vacation this week. We pulled into our front drive at 9:20 pm, and I pulled back out...again at 9:48. Off in search of the perfect pizza to top off a long week of being scrunced in too tight with too many people in a really little place. I have a mild case of sun poisoning on my arms and lower legs, but it'll be okay. I'm a beach bum.

Something struck me hard this week. Harder than the oncoming hurricane season that has already reared its ominous head this year. As I was scrunced and twisted and convorted in a small shower stall in our bathroom that only an infant or small child could fit into and actually shave their legs in without looking like a marionette doll, I was continously fighting with the temerature of the water. At one second it was scaldingly hot. The next millisecond I was shivering because it was much too cold. Standing there stark naked in this microspopic shower stall with my sister banging on the door to "hurry it up!", it hit me...

All this time I've been questioning my Salvation. Am I really saved? Can 4 year olds be saved? or do they have to wait? have I just been playing lip service all of these years. But the answer came to me on a windy night in North Myrtle Beach. I shouldn't be questioning my salvation, but rather the degree of my Christianity. I have been lukewarm for so many days, months, years, that I have forgotten what it means to be on fire, scaldingly hot for God. I've been coasting around, just barely getting by. As much and as passionately as I hate taking lukewarm showers, God hates my lukewarm-ness maginified a million-fold.

I can't seem to get this out of my head. It has continually been coming back to me. I've never experienced some of the things that other Christ-followers say that you have to have to be a "good Christian"...I don't hear God speaking directly to me, I cant' write songs or poems, I'm horrible a journaling everyday, and I have this genetic phobia about sharing things that are private. But, on the way home this afternoon/evening/night (it was an 8 hour trip home), mom told me and assured me as only my mother can, that this is okay. Dad would never talk about his walk, God hasn't left, He know exactly where I am, and that most importantly,and the thing I think gets lost the most along the way...everyone's walk is as different as their salvation story, or their thumbprint, and every other quirk that makes us...us.