Wanderlust

It’s funny how social media has given everyone the idea that life when you travel and move somewhere new is all wanderlust and happiness. I want to break that stigma right now. This blog post is about to get real. I love traveling and moving around but that doesn’t mean that sometimes it isn’t hard. It can be really emotional, tiring and at points downright awkward. I believe that our generation has underestimated the value of routine and planting deeps roots in a community.

 I love social media but I believe that it has contributed to this mindset of thinking that we have to have continual adventure and travels. We want so badly for our lives to be cool that we forget about actual relationships and events. We even forget to ask other people how there actually doing…apart from what we’ve seen them post. Social media is not always a very accurate way to tell how someone is actually doing and how there life is really going. We forget that a person is way more emotionally complex then a 3 dimensional picture that they post (hopefully anyways). We all just post the highlights because lets be real, who wants to post a bad picture?! I am as guilty of this as the next person. If you have looked at my blog at any point before you know that I love photography so of course I only want to post pictures that are appealing to me.

What we don’t post on the web and what no one ever tells you is how even when God gives you flashing signs in the sky to move somewhere, and drops $100 bills from the sky to get you there (thats my story..more to come later), you can still have doubts once you get there.  No one ever says how you can want nothing more then to leave home and do the will of God and as soon as you leave you want nothing more then to be home and your still as unsatisfied as before you left. Most of you know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t lie.

Anyways, all of this to say, some of you know that I recently moved 3 weeks ago to start attending Bethel School of Ministry. I had no expectations of what to expect when I got here. But as soon as I got here, for no apparent reason and I started comparing my short time here to past seasons in my life and I started slipping down a slippery path of comparing my new life to my old one.

I quickly realized what I was doing and made a decision to stop. I had to make myself stop comparing. Comparing to my old seasons, comparing to other peoples seasons and comparing to my future expectations. Every season is special, every season is unique and every season brings something new that we must embrace and learn. I realized that I can either stay in the same place and become complacent and stagnant or I can change and grow. This doesn’t mean that every season will be filled with wild, fantastic adventures. This means that sometimes life might get real, real as in hard, complicated, boring, or basic.

I love how as soon as I had this realization and perspective switch that things have been great. I’ve seen so many amazing things happen, we’re talking full on miracles people. Money showing up in peoples of accounts, people being changed and miraculously healed. I’ve already learned so many things and changed so much that I can’t even imagine how different I’m going to be by the end of these nine months. I wanted to post this not because I want to make everyone feel bad for me or to think that I’m having a terrible time because I AM NOT. I am loving life right now and I’m super excited to see what this time holds and just to clarify I will continue to travel and go on adventures. I just wanted to post it because people don’t ever post things like this. People don’t post the real emotions that you face sometimes when you travel and move and I want to bring awareness to it. I believe we can all grow and learn so much from each other, but only if we are being open, honest and sometimes vulnerable. I will go first and hopefully my transparency will allow you to go next. Tag, you’re it.

On that note…here are some pictures from my week!

The view from my front porch tonight. Not so bad.

Farmers Market.

Some things a girl just can’t live without.

Cool, random wood sculpture.

My hallway.

We went to space. Jk. We went to the Sundial Bridge.