overflowing joy and blessing

I drove to church this morning, blown away by the beauty of this city in which I live. The sun was still low on the horizon, casting beautifully colored hues over the bay. The blue sky against the mountains on the other side of the water was so beautiful, and I had to remind myself to keep my eyes on the road.

Today my heart overflows with joy. Nothing too particular happened, but I was just reminded again and again through the course of several rather mundane conversations with people at church how blessed I am to have found the church that I did. They have unreservedly opened their arms to me, showing me Christ's love again and again when it would be so easy to feel entirely isolated. I don't know what I would have done without them.

I fly back to South Dakota in six days. I am excited to visit my hometown and reconnect with the people I left behind to embark on this adventure. I am excited to tell them in person about what God has blessed me with out here in Bellingham. I am excited to see my family and to spend time with them. I'm not going to lie, though, it'd be really awesome if I had the superpower of being able to be in two places at once, because I am really going to miss my new family here.

On a slightly unrelated note, I finished the rough draft of my final paper for my theory class last night. I still have to read it over once more and probably make some slight changes, but it is for the most part complete. I'm terrified to hand it in, though, because I made a rather large philosophical/theoretical risk and I'm not sure how my professor will take it. I mean, I'm fairly confident there are probably holes in my argument - in fact I know that there are, as even the best theorists are critiqued. I'm just hoping that my argument is reponsible enough and well-defended enough to earn me his respect for at least trying. I'm really hoping and praying that there aren't glaring inconsistencies or that I didn't neglect important passages from books we read that would fundamentally deconstruct my argument. At the end of the day, though, what the professor thinks isn't horribly important. Even my grade isn't the most important. What matters is the journey I took to get to where I did - the fact that I wrestled openly and deeply with the issues posed by the theorists we read in class - and the fact that I finally arrived at a conclusion on which I can at least form the basis of something deeper.