Such is Life

You know what makes me feel great? When I do what it is I know I need to do. The stuff I hate. The hard stuff. The uncomfortable stuff. When I sit down and DO it.

I feel better for doing the hard stuff afterward, than if I had never had to do the hard stuff in the first place. Is that weird?

I think I feel so much better after because it is ultimately about obeying God--doing, in the "small" ways, the things he has put in front of me to do. And when I do it, I am not just doing the hard stuff...I am obeying Him.

AlmondJoy Candy Pieces...

...was (were? It was a single bag but it contained multiple pieces?) the only candy that I brought from home to Italy. I remember the night that I opened the bag...

Dana and I were sitting in our room late one night, talking, doing stuff on our computers. And I decided we needed a little chocolate lovin'. And what binds girls together more than the breaking of bread--or, chocolate? So I opened the bag and Dana and I laughed at how a simple thing like chocolate could make a person feel so much better, so much more at home, so much more...relaxed and content. I remember Dana laying on her bed, under a mound of blankets and me under my blankets. This was probably the first week of us being in Italy and our Florida blood was in a kind of "cold shock". Our toes were continually numb that first month and a half--yes, especially when in our apartment. (Our apartment was like an ice box! Actually, that was its nick-name..."The Ice Box".) But that night, while sharing the chocolate, our hearts connected over such a simple thing. Oh how I miss Dana.

Well today I bought another bag of those AlmondJoy pieces. They definitely tasted better when being shared with a friend, in a freezing room, with frozen toes, far away from home, in a town called Udine, in Italy.

How do we make these moments last?
And How do we get them to stay?
When everything passes and time goes away...
-Rosie Thomas

Missing Dana
Missing Italy
Realizing how little time in the past two weeks I have spent with God. It shows.

By the way, that is a picture I took of a street in Udine where I would walk almost every single day. And that is me and my Italian boyfriend holding hands and walking. Or not.

Common Ground

I am learning that friendships, at least at this point in my life, are not something that happen automatically. I have to "work", or put effort into maintaining, growing, and deepening them. I need relationships desperately, and I am realizing that I must be intentional in pursuing these friendships.

For most (normal) people that is probably a "well duh" moment. Oops. Sorry, I am a little behind the bandwagon.