I Left my Heart in Lansing

This week I started my internship back up in Lansing. (I have to finish my internship from this summer.) While I was driving back to North Branch, I started to get a little teary eyed...

When I first came to MSU, I was a girl who's life consisted of sports, good grades, and friends. Being at school with major athletes, geniuses, and 45,000 strange people, took what consumed my life and left me feeling lonely and unsure of the person I was. So what did I do? I fled to home where I could still be the person I was, without having to change. Change is scary, to anyone, but especially to me at that point in my life. I wanted things to stay the same for as long as possible.

It probably took me about a half of year at MSU to realize that it wasn't all bad. The campus was beautiful in fall, winter (even though its long), and spring, and the people at school were great! So instead of going home I stayed at school, and slowly I suppose I began to change. 

You have to know that before school, I had absolutely no insight into myself. My life had a shallow meaning and presence. I had no deep knowledge of why I did the things I did? Or why I was the way I was? It was only through people, long talks, and crazy life experiences that I discovered these things. 

I am definitely an extrovert and a feeler with a crazy spontaneity that a six year old would marvel at. But I think the most important thing I learned is that I am this, freely in Christ, whose grace gets me through every second of everyday, and whose blood was shed for me so thatI am clean. And I also learned that God does all things for my good, and in this crazy mess of life I can see the beauty of what he is teaching me, how he is molding me. 

And I feel sad because I learned it all in Lansing. The place that scared me so much, started to feel like home. Once a place feels like home, I guess you start dreaming about your life in that place. Without realizing it, I dreamed of living there with Elliott as we started are life together. I dreamed of living in a crappy apartment, working two jobs while El went to college, continuing to go to URC, of eventually or probably accidentally starting a family there. It was a dream I did not really know I had until I drove away from it. My dream shattered...

Sad, but I am glad I am back in a town that is so supportive and loving. In a familiar place where I can try to pick up the shards of a broken dream and glue them back together. I trust that God has my future and it is beautiful and good.