Getting going again and goals

Its funny, some blogs you sit down to write and they have purpose, meaning. Others have no meaning at all really, just your thoughts or your heart. I feel like today is one of those heart blogs. Its coupled with listening to Andrew Peterson's newest CD, and the fact that its raining outside, so maybe I'm just feeling nostalgic, sentimental, or just dare I say missing home.

I just returned back from a vacation trip and some much needed fun and am now realizing how hard it is going to be to get back in the swing of things. Vacation was so much like America, that coming back here with only two months left...is difficult at best. Truth be known, it made me miss home. I read an email today that said something like, "when you love deep, you hurt deep." Not too long ago someone actually told me that I was that type of person. Yes, I am deeply passionately, love deeply, but that also means your heart can get hurt deeply as well. Its hard to be here and realize you only have two months. I have friends who only have a week left here, I can't imagine what they are feeling. Yet you push yourself to still try to plug in, still care, still love, knowing that you have to give it all up and soon. I've been down this road once with saying goodbye to my last city and its hard and honestly I'm not sure I want to go through this again. And yet, I know I have to. Knowing that the people that are in your life now, you'll soon say goodbye too and that its very likely you'll lose contact with them over the months and years and this part of your life will only be for a season.

I was looking at my walls today as I was unpacking. Walls that have scrptr cards over my desk, post-it notes of what I need to do this week, quotes on coffee mugs filled with pencils and markers, pictures of family and friends I love, index cards written in bright colors filled with names of people around me I need to pr for and talk with and a few posters of goals. I also realized this week that when i get home, it won't be pictures of friends and families on the walls...I'll get to see them everyday. The pictures that will grace my walls at home will be brothers and sisters, locals, whom some I will see again and some I will not. A little heart-rending.

I was laughing at my goal posters today. I'm not a big advocate of goals, personally I hate to make them and usually when someone says, "you need to have your goals to me by Friday," I FREAK OUT! But, as I've gotten older, I see the purpose of goals, see the value in them. One poster I have was workout goals leading up to vacation...failed at those, we've all been there...lol. The other is the days of the week and what I need to do each day to fulfill other goals in my life. Some are exercise, some are reading specific Books, others are errands, study goals, talking goals and on and on. I even have a nap up there, which never gets taken...mostly by choice. Today, I realized how faded that poster was becoming. I've achieved some goals on that poster, and some I haven't...but to me, things like that poster become beautiful with time. Even now, I look at that piece of paper and chuckle at some things...whew I had such thoughts of grandeur, and other things still motivate me. I guess I just thought, you know I don't ever want to be one of those people that just has a lists and is so consumed with the list, the goals that they check them off and throw them away... I want to be able to look back, laugh at the ridiculous ideas, roll my eyes at the items I never accomplished and smile at the ones that the Father helped me thrive in... just never thought I'd enjoy looking at a poster full of goals, and more than enjoy them, laugh at the joy in the things of life. As I write this and look out my window at all the apartments around I wonder about the people living in them. My goals revolve around Him, well most of them. What do their goals look like? Do they have any? Can they laugh at them? Is there any joy in something as simple and ridiculous in goals?

I'm looking forward to coming home, and writing a new set of goals. But thinking how much I need to do here. How I would so love to show these people a new set of goals that aren't mine or theirs, but His. I guess I'm pleading with Him to help me accomplish the important ones here...the names on the index card, the faces down the street.

Beautiful, wistful, Feet