Once you've not blogged for a certain length of time, it's hard to get back into it. You open a new post, type in a few words, and realize you have (1) nothing to say or (2) too much to say. What's relevant and important changes the longer you leave your blog untouched. Usually this is as far as I get. I read what few words I've written and think "ugh, I don't want to say that"; erase and shut my laptop, wondering what kind of significance my life has if I can't write about it. (Writing about my life, whether privately in a journal or online in a blog, has for me been a constant method of self-assessment and mental cohesion. Being unable to draw a narrative or interpretation from what happens to me/what goes on in my head is disconcerting.)
If this post makes it from the draft posts to the blog, it will be a miracle.
I'll try broad and unrelated points. The storyteller in me will just have to swallow the fact that they're relatively unconnected.
Wales is, quite simply, beautiful. It's beautiful when the sun shines but also when it's been raining for days. It's still odd for me to not be living smack in nature, but I at least have a view of neighbors' gardens from my window and occasionally get of out town to the wilder parts of the country.
Speaking of the neighbors' gardens (see, I'm trying to connect things and make logical segues), I have new neighbors because I moved. My new house is smaller and farther away from the university, but you could also say it's cozier and encourages more exercise. It's nearer to some of the international communities and I love walking down the road and hearing so many different languages and smelling a delicious variety of foods. I often hear Arabic, actually, which only serves to remind me how little of it I remember.
I went home for Christmas, which was wonderfully rejuvenating. I don't think I realized how run-down I was until I got home to where I was comfortable and familiar and without obligation. You may hear exciting and glamorous stories of studying abroad or moving abroad, but my immediate experience was that it's not easy and it's not glamorous. Particularly when you're inexplicably ill for the first three months. I'm grateful, though, that so far I've been back a month and am currently still healthy (please pray that continues).
I originally began to write here about what all I'm grateful for, but it quickly turned sappy so I erased it. The reason I don't like to say sappy things is the sappiness - the triteness, the I've-heard-this-kind-of-thing-before - undercuts the huge significance and serious meaning that I'm trying to express. I'd rather not say something than have you underestimate its huge importance. Maybe I'm in the wrong, acting that way.
Just know this. Nothing I have, did I earn. Nothing I have, do I deserve. Everything I have, is more beautiful and perfect than my own desires could have created, even when I gripe about it or take it for granted.
I encourage you to examine your own life and see if this is true.
If this post makes it from the draft posts to the blog, it will be a miracle.
I'll try broad and unrelated points. The storyteller in me will just have to swallow the fact that they're relatively unconnected.
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| Everybody's all 'oo Ireland is so pretty'. What about Wales? |
Speaking of the neighbors' gardens (see, I'm trying to connect things and make logical segues), I have new neighbors because I moved. My new house is smaller and farther away from the university, but you could also say it's cozier and encourages more exercise. It's nearer to some of the international communities and I love walking down the road and hearing so many different languages and smelling a delicious variety of foods. I often hear Arabic, actually, which only serves to remind me how little of it I remember.
I went home for Christmas, which was wonderfully rejuvenating. I don't think I realized how run-down I was until I got home to where I was comfortable and familiar and without obligation. You may hear exciting and glamorous stories of studying abroad or moving abroad, but my immediate experience was that it's not easy and it's not glamorous. Particularly when you're inexplicably ill for the first three months. I'm grateful, though, that so far I've been back a month and am currently still healthy (please pray that continues).
I originally began to write here about what all I'm grateful for, but it quickly turned sappy so I erased it. The reason I don't like to say sappy things is the sappiness - the triteness, the I've-heard-this-kind-of-thing-before - undercuts the huge significance and serious meaning that I'm trying to express. I'd rather not say something than have you underestimate its huge importance. Maybe I'm in the wrong, acting that way.
Just know this. Nothing I have, did I earn. Nothing I have, do I deserve. Everything I have, is more beautiful and perfect than my own desires could have created, even when I gripe about it or take it for granted.
I encourage you to examine your own life and see if this is true.
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