Spring Break-in My Heart!

I went home during my students' Spring Break (abnormally late in the game for spring break, I think) and spent a magnificent 7 full days in peak spring/pollen North Carolina time. How wonderful it was to be with my family, my gold friends, and in the warm embrace of my home state! Home was very relaxing, though I did a bit of running around; Chapel Hill for an afternoon to sit in on a class in the Master's of Public Health Program (eee!) and have dinner, Wrightsville Beach for a day to bask in the sunlight in a bathing suit, eat a Jersey Mike's sub, and cry a little that that would be the only time I'd be on that beach for a looooong time; Bachelorette partying; dear friends being wedded; an attempt to visit Queens and all of the people I love there undermined by broken shifter cables.

We started my stay with a family lunch on the patio, complete with mimosas with peach schnapps.

Bobby working the grill and some delicious chicken!

After lunch family nature walk!

Boy Band

Roll tide! We made a crazy GoPro video.

ALIVE!

Fiddle Heads

As I mentioned, it was peak pollen time. Friends, that is pollen making the lake completely yellow.

Barf! I hate lakes!

This was right up next to the shore after I stirred it up. ALSKDFJ!!!!!!!

After nature walking, nothing is quite so refreshing as a June Bug.

America

A portion of TLC

TLC all together for the first time in approximately 3 years?!

Girls headed to the Wedding!

One thing that is apparent to me at this time: I am investing a lot of hope in a very particular life plan  for myself over the course of the next 4 years and there is absolutely no security in doing this, as there is no promise anything will work out in the way I plan. When I was leaving Wrightsville, saying goodbye to family that I won't see until at least August, and missed getting to Charlotte, I felt like things were being taken out of my hands, me, powerless, to do anything about it. It's a hard intersection, having self-motivated, ambitious goals and seeking to let my life be Directed. What if I'm directed somewhere completely different than where I think I ought to be, or rather, where I want to be? I have this heart that says my life is mine, but a spirit and mind that know otherwise. It's breaking my heart to let my hands fall open and let things- plans, places, and precious time with people- blow away with wind. I meditate on these promises:

No one who follows me stumbles around in the darkness. I provide plenty of light to live in. (John 8:12)

If you stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure. Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you. (John 8:32)

If you practice what I'm telling you, you'll never have to look death in the face. (John 8:51)

Anyone who goes through me will be cared for - will freely go in and out, and find pasture. (John 10:8)

I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of. (John 10:10)

My sheep recognize my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them real and eternal life. They are protected from the Destroyer for good. No one can steal them from out of my hand. The Father who put them under my care is so much greater than the Destroyer and Thief. No one could ever get them away from him. (John 10:26)

Waiting, trying to faithful as wretched as I am,

JB