A New Way Of Looking At Things

To say the least, it has been hard being home. It has been huge time of transition and adjustment for me moving from N. Ireland to Southern California. I feel like I have become a bit more settled here, but there is still this feeling of mayhem. It's as if there are things that are settled around me, but not inside of me.
Since coming home I have gotten in touch with the school that I was hoping to go to and everything came together perfectly. I will now be attending Cal State Fullerton University in the Fall of 2009 for my freshmen year of college! It will be a big change and a challenging time for me getting back into school, but I know God will guide me every step of the way. Since being home and having all these things come together, I have received words about me being at school and me going to school, which has been extremely encouraging for me. It helps me become settled in my heart, knowing that this IS the place where God has brought me and that He IS in what I am doing.
So beyond school, all that I am trying to do now is get a job.

Thats whats been happening around me and with me lately, but here is what has been happening inside of me lately:

Ever since I have been home there has been a tension inside of me between what I have seen and experienced and what I am seeing and experiencing now. It is a tension between the past and the present.
In N. Ireland while I was doing my internship with CCV, everything was new and everything was a learning experience. Over the 10 months I was there I got to learn, see, experience, and grow exponitially in more things than I could have ever dreamed of. I was exposed to a culture and a way of life that has been so deeply engraved in me, that it has followed me here to California.
Before I came back to Southern California I foresaw a few things that I would be encountering and that would be a struggle for me to transition into. Now being home I have been engadging with those things and experiencing those struggles for over a month now. I have experienced times of lonliness, times of hopelessness, times where I wanted to go back to N. Ireland, and even times where I was angry and confused to why I was in So Cal. As I said at the beginning 'To say the least, it has been hard being home.'
Today I went and grabbed coffee with a friend and shared my experience and my heart that had been transformed by God in N. Ireland. I shared my struggles and some of the things that I was finding hard dealing with since being home. After sharing all the things that I had learned, grown in, and become acustomed to, my friend shared a bit of truth that I had lost in the mayhem of this past month. He opened my eyes to see things through a new lense. It has been hard for me to see what God has been doing here with me since I got home, but now I feel like I have a greater idea and purpose through what I now see.
When I was interning with the Causeway Coast Vineyard I was within a culture, a church, and around people that were very focused and driven for the purpose and the calling that God had put upon them. You know that saying, "some things are better caught than thought."? That is what I experienced in Northern Ireland. I feel like I have caught a vision and a calling that God has put on His church for the lost. And now coming back home where I am away from this environment and these people, the things that are within my heart are truly tested. My friend opened my eyes to see that some of the greatest fruit isn't during the time of learning, but it is during the time of testing; sometimes it is during those wilderness experiences that the most fruit comes. He showed me that now during the time where my heart and my mind is being tested and challenged is the time where I can see the true depth and worth of what I have recieved. That this time can be greater than the last.

That was a huge encouragement for me. It was the new perspective that I needed. It doesn't make any of the things that I am going to be facing easier, but it helps bring hope and expectancy to the journey.

Thanks for reading.