Looking back, and forward

I was sitting here, reading through my old blogs, and got to one from August 2009 where I mentioned that I was at a crucial place in life -- about to graduate from grad school -- and hoping that God would open doors for me and that my heart through knowing Him would be finely enough tuned in to hearing His voice that I would find my way easily into whatever unknown that the future would bring.  I just wanted to blog here one more time, to comment on what that next year or so would end up bringing for me...

My God, that was a tough year!!! 

I made the choices I felt were right, and, yes, I did feel peace about my decisions and I'm still positive I made the right ones.  But God made this a year for me to walk through some kind of crazy valley, and in hindsight I experience that this brought me huge personal growth and prepared me to appreciate his upcoming blessing and calling for me in an even much stronger way.

I ended up applying for jobs for e v e r, going to job interviews, getting my hopes up, going to more interviews, sending more applications, not having money for food, for rent, for insurance, for my student loans, and not getting any of the jobs I applied to for a whole entire year and a half!  I felt like such a second class citizen- you know, the feeling you get when nobody seems to want you, for a really long time.  And I got, at times, really really depressed.  The reason, of course (or so I believe), why I didn't get any jobs was that I was on a temporary visa, and an employer would have to go through the visa application process for me.  However, I was dating an American, and more than likely we figured we would end up getting married, but we couldn't just hurry up and get married so that I would get a work permit, and employers couldn't just trust that some day in the future I'd have a green card that they wouldn't have to pay for.  Of course, I am also from another culture, and in interview after interview I messed up by being too honest, or too talkative, or by underselling myself.  I was really miserable, but somehow I still believed I was in the right place.  Call me crazy...

I lived at the mercy of my friends, in six different places in a year, on people's couches and for free.  Some friends helped me pay rent at an apartment. And Ryan, who was my "friend" in my August blog entry but really was my boyfriend, bought me food pretty much every single day.  And the meals he didn't buy for me, I usually didn't have.  So I was hungry a lot.

I got the flu like crazy, and was really sick for almost a month.  It's real fun being sick when you don't have insurance... but I guess a lot of americans know that.

I was unable to go home and see my family for the longest period of time ever, because I didn't have money, until I finally broke down and cried to my dad and he bought me a ticket (ahh, the feeling of relief when you finally get to go HOME when you've been through crap and you just don't feel like you can take it anymore).

I was dating Ryan, and it challenged me to the core of my identity.  As an individual within a relationship I started working on some dynamics within me, and got to know myself in new ways.  It was pretty painful, and in a lot of ways it was a growing-up-process that I had to go through.  I had to grow up, and also learn to recognize and let go of my not-so-useful family dynamics that really had no other function besides hurting myself when I ended up carrying them with me into my own adult life.  Also, it was hard, but at the same time beautiful, to be dating someone, letting myself love someone, without knowing whether we'd get more serious or even wanting to commit too soon to a permanent, life-long kind of thing.  I loved dating him, but I hated it at the same time.  And it shook up who I was.

So, yeah, all that stuff was crappy.

Now, here's what was good:

Ryan and I started a house church with some friends.  It felt like we were cheating on our "real" church family a little bit, but really we were starting to work out some of our dreams and visions with people who felt the same way.  I started a co-mentoring relationship with one of the women in our house church, and we'd meet weekly just to talk.  Every single person in our house church ended up going through a horrible time of crappy transition and of not having money or of being sick.  I especially remember this one Sunday night in the spring of 2010 when Ryan was unable to make it, and how we all vented to each other about how difficult life was at that moment, how we felt like we were going nowhere in our personal lives or in what we felt God calling us to do, yet we all felt like we were in the right place at that particular time of life.  It felt unbelievably encouraging having other, caring people to go through your crap with.  And people that would share their lunches and their cans of food with me even though they didn't have very much and I usually gave them nothing back.

I got to know Ryan better as time went by, and our relationship just felt more and more right and good.  And because I had dared not putting any expectations on it or frames around it from the beginning it was as if our relationship got to grow from the bottom up and with its own legs to stand on rather than having to grow into any preconceived image that I might have had.  And thus it ended up growing past any expectations I have ever had and being something better than I ever could have hoped for.  An undeserved blessing, that's what it's felt like all along.

After a year of being "unemployable" I started studying for the NCLEX exam to be registered as a nurse in the US (I am already registered in my home country). I studied for about a month... then...

...we decided to get married... we had both graduated... my visa was coming to an end... we were ready to move forward both in life and in ministry, and after daring to have that first scary conversation about maybe..possible.. ending up together...that just didn't sound very scary at all.  We started building a stronger spiritual foundation, praying together, making concrete plans for our futures. The snowball of blessing kept rolling when Ryan announced that he'd love it if we moved to Norway (!) and stayed there for a while.  "A while" has now turned into two years with the possibility of a lifetime.  We got married in November, and things are getting even better by the minute.  I am very happy.

I passed the NCLEX but then got hired as a nurse in Norway-I didn't even really have to apply.  Man, it feels nice being wanted somewhere after a year and a half as unemployed!  We've got a place lined up to live in Norway, for free.  We got accepted by a mission organization that we will be working with while there.  Our friends from our house church were also called by God to work in Europe. So it seems God was up to something and that he was preparing an re-rooting us somehow.  Or even if you want to argue that trials won't come from God, I know that he did use this time in my life to make me ready to receive the blessings which he would later have in store for me.  Our house church was appropriately named "Release," and that is exactly where I feel like my life is at right now.

I'm so excited for the fuuuutuuure!!!  There were open doors in store for me, they were one heck of a long year away, but I feel like I am back on top of a mountain with a view, and I'm just going to sit back and enjoy it and rest up for a while...

God bless y'all, and thanks for reading.

Today I think I might go to Old Town and sit and read a book.  Or stay at home and run updates on my phone and read a book.  Hehe. Extrovert choice vs introvert choice.  Fine, I'll go with the second one.  I've already done well and eliminated the option of going to the beach to aquire a nice mid-winter tan from my list:)

Things are going well here in Pasadena.  I started working half-time for my church and I've been to a few other job interviews although none of those have worked out.  I continue to seek God's will as to what I'm supposed to spend my time doing, but I don't think I'm quite there yet.  I'm not entirely happy with this state of in-between that I'm in.  Oh well.  Being faithful in the little things, I suppose, that's what I've got to focus on right now.

I am absolutely pathetic.  I've been sitting down all afternoon, it seems I am not able to move, only sit here and think.  I'm trying to make myself go out and watch a movie, to force some new impulses into my brain.  In sheer desperation I will see the semi-new Harry Potter movie, that's how much I need to kick myself in the head right now.  Unemployment and other mind-itching issues are making me something I do not enjoy being.

Thank you for letting me complain.

agh...

I know i'm generally pretty sappy and probably boring in my blogs, mostly talking about how i'm so happy or how God is looking out for me.  It's like the theme of my life, though.  God's provision and his close and loving care for me.  But lately--it's as if the letters have jumped off the page and out of the book--they're all over now, and God is blowing me away completely.  I'm experiencing a crazy turn in life towards where my prayers seem to-and although i'm enjoying it immensely i know i'm also holding off from completely believing it--be moving towards their answer.  And i guess I've been praying for things, and believing for them to happen, yet at the same time thinking in all humility that I would be okay, you know, if God chose not to answer me in the ways i was asking him to.

But I KNOW that God gives us visions for a reason.  I also know that we can usually only see parts of the road at a time.  This one turn in the road that i am walking on takes my breath away, it's that beautiful.  I'm so glad that at (most of) the intersections in my life this far I have chosen to trust him rather than to spend tons of time freakin out or trying out all the other detours before sitting down to listen for God's voice.  And I'm glad that, although i didn't have to freak out--all I did was trust the feeling inside of me which I believe to be God--God either mercifully accepted my wrong turns or he actually had planted a right path in my heart in the first place.  My feeling is that the latter is the case though, although I can never know...  This particular part of my life definitely feels like a time of divine blessing and accomodation and surprise.  It is VERY strengthening to my faith, not in God himself but in his very alive and active involvement in our lives every day. 

Now, I think that at all times when we are experiencing extremes of any kind, we will, if we are able to maintain perspective, be enabled to see life more deeply and to gain a lot of wisdom from it.  Some people call these Kairos moments, and they talk about how we need to make sure we go through "the learning circle" when we are in a Kairos moment so that we come out better persons with more to offer, so that God can put into us all that he has intended.  and so that we can redirect ourselves towards our final life goal, i guess. 

There's tons of learning to do where i am at.  Along with all this blessing I am also experiencing so many opportunities to choose to trust God all over again.  And I think that some are opportunities to walk away from God.  I choose to take trials as a complement, as proof that I am moving forward in God's kingdom.  I really don't think that any of all these things going on right now are coincidential.  But I won't be overwhelmed:)

Yeah, this is another sappy post.  I'm mostly writing this for myself anyway, to be able to remember things and see life in perspective and to know what I am hoping for if life finds itself in a harder place again later on.  Through reading this you have become part of my "learning circle" ;)  Remember, before you let circumstances get to you, take a moment to sit still and just be, and ask God to be close to you.  He will direct you, I have no doubt in my heart about that.

A couple of weeks back I remembered a hymn i used to sing a lot when i was a teenager.  It's Swedish, called Blott en Dag, in English it's called Day by Day, and one of its lines say "as your day, your strength will be in measure --this the promise he has given me."  It's pretty dang awesome.  When I remembered this song, I spent a couple of hours singing it, and just remembered how God has promised to never ever let me go.  That is my experience, too, he never has let me go.  And I don't think he ever ever ever will.