Bethany -

I am so glad your mom's surgery went well! I will keep praying for her. God's taking care of you guys.

I'm so glad you didn't need surgery, but that's crazy about your ovaries and uterus. Did you get another check-up? Praying for that too. Dealing with those kinds of potential problems is scary.

CONGRATULATIONS, YOU'RE HIRED! I'm so excited about your official graduate student-hood and internship and living on your own. You are a grown-up. Yay!

Lindsay -

Your life sounds glorious. I'm so excited that God has you right where He wants you, doing exactly what He wants you to do. It sounds like you are really being used in the lives of many people (at work and at church), and that's awesome! Keep it up. And Jesus is the best boyfriend.

Update on my life...

Everything is mostly the same. Job, singleness, no solid plans. Honestly, I've been feeling depressed lately. Not crazy/suicidal/can't-get-out-of-bed depressed, but just bummed and feeling ignored by God. Like I keep asking Him what I'm supposed to do, or to at least just open a door or give me a hint, and there just hasn't been anything. I still love the people I'm around, but I'm just not feeling fulfilled by much that I'm doing.

Over the past week, though, I've had some ideas. I talked about this in my personal blog, but I'm thinking again about going on The World Race (and so is Brittany, as it turns out!). I signed up for this a little over a year ago, but for various reasons, decided not to go. But I'm feeling antsy, ready for something new, something different. My heart and passion have been for world change, seeing God do the impossible, getting to be a part of it... And this is one of those things where all of that is just inevitable. It makes me scared and excited: living out of ONE FREAKING BACKPACK for 11 months, depending entirely on God, peeing in a hole, being outside for a long time, and we won't even go into the whole hair and makeup thing (you all know full well how much effort I put into not looking ridiculous), and somehow coming up with 15 grand. I know a lot of those things just aren't me. But I feel a tug on my heart for a change. For a tight-knit community of people who are all about God. To expand myself. Really, to just get over myself. Because I care way too much about things that just aren't important.

So, there is that. I updated my application I put in last year and resubmitted it (haven't paid that "application fee" yet, though... I guess it takes $39 for a person to be capable of reading it), so it's not really official or anything. But that's where I'm leaning right now. And I'm stoked!

Also, I'm thinking about going to law school. Ha! Seriously, though. I've played with the idea of counseling or social work for awhile now, but I'll be honest with you guys: I just don't have the heart for it. I've watched most of you love on people that I could just never stand to be around. And I admire you so much. I wish I could be as patient and gracious and loving as you are (God's working on me, don't worry), but social work just isn't my heartbeat. But I do want to make a difference, just in a different way. Like social work, there are so many different facets of being a lawyer: domestic abuse, adoption, public defense, international justice... And I feel like that line of work might be more where I live. As in, "here is the problem, and here are all the things I know how to do, and this is the procedure for how we are going to do them." And lots of jobs are like that, but I feel like my M.O. will work best in this one. But I don't know. I guess I don't have very good or solid reasons for this, but to me it makes sense. Maybe The World Race, work a "semester", and then law school. Or maybe I'll move to Alaska and be a missionary with all my camp friends. Or something. We'll see. It's easy to come up with lots of crazy ideas when you spend a lot of time by yourself.

As for romance: No men in my life, as usual, but I went on a date with a Catholic a couple of weeks ago. We were set up by his aunt, who is in charge of the outreach team at The Bridge. I went into it with pretty low expectations for more than one reason, and it didn't exceed any of them. So I guess that's good, haha. He's nice, but super quiet, and a Catholic. We had coffee at Panera, and after about 45 minutes (that's when you know things are going super well), I said, "Well, do you have anything you need to get to tonight?" which he clearly took as, 'I think you're super awesome - let's go do something else now!' So he responded, "Well, I was going to go work out, but I can do that later if you want to do something." And then I felt dumb and just said, "Oh, I was going to go to church..." which was true, as it it was Celebrate Recovery night; but it didn't start for another 1 1/2 hr. So then he felt kind of embarrassed but managed to say something about getting together again sometime, to which I responded (as nicely as I could), "Yeah, we'll talk." Fail. Then he sent me a Facebook message this morning to see if I wanted to hang out again sometime, and I told him I don't want to date anybody right now because I don't know how much longer I'll be in Anderson. Which is all the way true. Good times. I think I should start a blog called "The Chronicles of First and Only Dates."

Uhhh... Yes. Oh, Brianne and I are hanging out this weekend! YEAH!

Anyway, those are all the things. Sorry this was so long and mostly about nothing concrete. Ha. I guess it's one of those much-needed thought vomit times.

I love and miss you all!