So the past few days I feel a little like I've been searching for myself. I dropped a class yesterday. Definately an action quite unlike me. But I've been thinking a lot lately about a lot of different things. One thing being the importance of taking time to take care of my body. Another being not allowing society's demands of my pace of life dictate what I do or value or strive for but instead seeking a pace that Jesus came to show was right for how we were made.

I haven't taken much time lately to stop and reflect and so I am feeling a little lost, a little disconnected from myself. And that is not good. Its a bit deadening, makes me feel dry and lost and confused. Do you ever get to that place in your life where you just feel like you are being carried along with the waves and you just long for your feet to touch the ground for a moment?

Today is sunday. A day of resting and rejoicing and I feel more like it is a day of one more thing I have to do-- one more place I have to be before tomorrow. Not that it isn't a place that I want to be, but its still one more step on the treadmill and I just want to stop. This week has been packed-- bursting at the seams but I get a sense that I wasted a lot of time searching for my heart, searching for those moments of solitude that I allowed worry to crowd out. And so here I am today. One class less and just wanting a little excuse to put the solitude that I know is so important first.

I woke up this morning and realized a lot of things in my have changed. Last night at our Saturday night small group discussion, we only talked about one thing: what is the biggest thing you have seen changed in you in the past year. It was a hard question becuase how do you pick one thing when the change has been in everything-- the place you live, the people you live with, the way you think, the things you value, the things you are afraid of. But I woke up this morning and knew that I was thinking differently. I no longer thought of church of this thing I had to do to maintain some status with God and it wasn't this thing I had to conquer or wrestle through. It was just a continuation, a peice that bobbed along with the flow of my everyday life. And how refreshing that thought was.

I feel like all the things I think about and the ways I think are so different today than they were a year ago. I feel much less afraid, that is for sure. As I look back over the summer, I see some much change and growth, which is hard to both explain and nail down as I felt like most of the summer was just this monotonous slavery and pain. But at the same time, I became deeper parts of lots of different communities and being alone most of the time forced me to think a lot. I feel sort of like the change has been hammered into me like silver in a fire. Look, I have refined you as silver.

And so I look at myself taking all of these plunges, daring to take these steps into freefalling, that I never thought I would have the courage to take. Taking time from school. Not something the Heidi I used to know would do. Moving to another state. Something the old Heidi would have dreamed of, but not been able to take the steps to say yes to. Learing trust like crazy. Learning to find healing from old lies. Being able to find areas of "irresponsibilities" that are just lies to keep me on the treadmill. To find freedom.

It has been a long, grueling week and I am tired. I feel trapped in a room all by myself with lists written all over the walls and nothing to nourish the dried up and hardened heart within my aching chest. And so... I dropped a class yesterday.