home.

I have recently been inspired to start keeping a blog again. I don't know why I've had such a negative "blogging" connotation in my mind before. Perhaps it was the fact that friends of mine had online journals in high school that were closer to a Mean Girls status burn book than anything else...and I found myself the one being burned just a few times too many. Yeah...that's probably it! But I've come to realize that, as an adult, this is a place to reflect, to share, and to keep in contact with those I love. Not that I think my thoughts are overly important...but hey, what better place to share my mediocre thoughts then in the midst of the world wide web?!

So here I am...at "home." I use the phrase tentatively now, not because I don't consider this home anymore, but because it is one of multiple homes. It has taken me a while to get settled in. I've found myself longing for the sun-filled days of Santa Barbara, spent lounging with my best friends. Instead, I've been weathering the weather of Colorado with the company of my parents, my dog, and my overly-vocal cat. My two homes are so very different. Life in Santa Barbara is faster, more social, more stimulating. Life in Littleton is quiet, calm, solitary. Neither one is bad...they are just so very different. My challenge right now is learning to be content no matter where I am.

When I got home last week after a 19 hour drive with my mom, the rest of the summer stretched before me very much like the roads I had just travelled. At the outset they were incredibly daunting...the drive seemed that it would last forever. But now, only one week in, things are seeming much more manageable. I believe that, like the drive I just completed, this summer will be over much more quickly than I anticipate. As I lay here on my blue and yellow comforter, looking out the window past the newly budded aspen leaves towards the Rockies that burst out of the ground only about a mile from here, I am realizing that I am content. Today I have chosen joy in this place, and have allowed a small bit of peace to enter in.

I pray for you today - that you would find new green aspen buds, snow dusted mountains, and warm chocolate cake. And I pray for peace in the place where you are.