Enchanted...

Friends, let me just tell you how much I love my state...
Today I was driving home (to Albuquerque) from a cabin in Cloudcroft (a little mountain town near Ruidoso)(note, please if you're a Texan, the O on the end of Ruidoso, not an A, it's an O) and, as I drove down the mountain, I was treated to view of White Sands meeting black lava with blue and purple peaks of more mountains in the background. White Sands looks like an ocean of white (the dunes look like waves from far away) and it just kind of fades back into desert out toward the north (i think...) until the desert suddenly appears black. The black is from Malpais, a big lava flow. Always, always in the background are more mountains.
I stopped at Malpais and hiked around for a little while because I'd been raging within at the situation I've again found myself in (more later on that) and I needed some air. I was reminded how much I love, love, LOVE to be outside as I wandered down a path through the lava. Malpais is like another world...black lava that has bubbled and cracked and wrinkled and completely covered everything. There are some plants growing out of the crevices and they are almost startlingly green next to the black. In a place like Malpais, it feels like there is room for my soul to expand to the depth and width that it is supposed to be... it feels like the cold air and the blue sky and the mountains in the distance are all working to clean me out, all those crannies within that get so crammed full and twisted up with junk thoughts in every day life.
I know that New Mexico is ridiculed with every breath by nearly everyone I know in TX...but you're all wrong, it's not ugly or barren, it is beautiful. The openness and the desert is lonely and really does enchant you after awhile...the colors that vary from yellow to brown to red to pink to purple to blue to white beckon somehow...the mountains and their sweet cold air and pine trees and aspens speak peace...the sound of the wind through the cottonwood tree leaves tempts the soul to dream of flying, soaring. This is a place where I can think and where dreams feel unlimited and where it seems God himself reaches down to paint my sky and the land around every sunrise and sunset. Beautiful.

Well folks, it's about time

Sorry, as usual, that it's been such a long time since I've posted anything...other than quotes from other people...my mind has been on so many other things...
The exciting thing though is that I'm finally graduating! It feels so good to have finished something, and to be proud of it! The only sad part about that is that I'm leaving Lubbock (ha, laugh it up my friends, who ever thought I'd be sad to leave Lubbock!)... This last Sunday was my last Ninethirty and that was kind of bittersweet - I love my church at home and I'm excited to return there, but I have been changed forever by being a part of Ninethirty for the last 5 and a half years. I have at times been restless and have thought about visiting another church (and I actually did when I was a freshman or maybe sophomore...I don't remember) but then I think about how much I have learned about loving people at First B and how much I have learned about God as full of grace and mercy and how much I've learned about the Bible from the Ewings and from other lifestyle teachers. I have been impacted so much by the people that have loved me right from the very beginning and all the way through, especially during this summer when I had such a hard time. All that to say, I'm sad to leave. It also occurs to me that I no longer know anyone in Albuquerque (where I'm moving) besides my family and my best friend... and while I've never been one to shy away from being alone, I have come to value friendship immensely these last few years. I just didn't realize how valuable and necessary it is until lately (which sounds absolutely ridiculous, but is true). Emily and Sahala, my roommates, are so wonderful and are such good friends, it is going to be so sad to leave them. Melissa and Tyson and Makenna and Tracen have become like a second family to me and it will be really sad to not see them every week.

I am excited about new adventures and new places, very excited, just suprised by how sad I am to leave Lubbock. I always say that I like change, change is good...and I still think it is...time keeps on rolling and life goes on and the sun keeps shining, guess I gotta just get with it!