more myself now than ever...

I was just rereading some old posts and came across this one. It's from August 11th. Just a few short days before I got the call to come to Alaska. It's interesting to read it now and see just how "depressed" and down I was at the time - unfulfilled, hopeless, purposeless, empty. Man how things have changed! It was just a week later that I applied to ACC and then another short week after that that I made the long move up North. I can't fully describe the fulfillment I have experienced these past few months.

Hosea 2:6-7 says, "Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, 'I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now." God led me to a place of intense dissatisfaction and an overwhelming desire for something more, a yearning for him. And then he gave me the desires of my heart - to live in Alaska and to go to Bible College where I could immerse myself in him and root myself more deeply in him. He is my husband in this verse. I love that verse! I can see how God has done this in my own life. That verse has really come alive for me since I've been here.

The posts from then compared to now are different. They seem to be more uplifting now; but I feel more uplifted now than I did then so I guess it makes perfect sense.

It's occurred to me that my journey here has been a long time in the making. The desire for adventure that I have I remember having as a little girl. I began climbing the ladder to the roof where my dad was working at no more than 4 or 5 years old probably. I would dig in the creek parallel to our house for crawdads. When we went to Colorado on vacation I remember feeling I belonged there, on top of Pike's Peak. I was not a girlie girl by any means, at least not that I remember, my dad might tell you different, I don't know. But I don't think I was a girlie girl. I am not one now either. I prefer sweatshirts and jeans to frilly tops with lace and flowers. I prefer the outdoors to shopping. I prefer the smell of a campfire to room freshener. I prefer the crackling of a fire to the tv blaring. All of these things have been a part of who I am for a long time. God gave me these desires for a reason. And God arranged the time that these desires would be fulfilled. For a time such as this. I desired this for so long that it makes the blessing of it having been fulfilled that much sweeter now. I am more myself now than I have ever been.

And, really, hasn't that been God's plan all along?