Is Home Really Where My Rump Rests?

This year has been an odd year, and due to the intense situations ebbing and flowing through my senior year I have been disinclined to truly enjoy where I am. So it was a great surprise to me when, for the first time in 7 months, I actually started enjoying my desert. My spring break was actually full of fun little surprises like that.

It hit me while I was taking the 60 home. I remembered a Dutch phrase I learned last January. Translated, it's something like "if the sun sets red, tomorrow will be a good day". Haha... well, that's not so hard for Phoenix. With a climate not allowing for many clouds or moisture, our sunrises and sunsets have more colors in a single day than most people ever see. So I guess that means a very high percentage of days should have good "tomorrow"s.

While I glided along the silent freeway going somewhere around 70mph with the windows down, the cool desert spring air hit with a slight wet scent which probably meant that somewhere a sprinkler had broken. The mountains shone red in front of me and I heavily considered continuing until I ran out of gas, which in my little car could have been well into the night. And suddenly it hit me. I'm not going to live here. I know, I don't really live in Gilbert anymore as is, but after August I really won't live there. I don't even know exactly when I'd be coming back. A few months? A year? more? I don't want to stay. I'm not wishing I could be in Gilbert or Tucson instead, it just seems so odd to think that my parents house will never be my home anymore. Even though I haven't spent more than 3 consecutive weeks at home in the past 4 years I've always referred to it as my home. It's the place where I send my phone and credit bills, it's the place where I run to when I get tired of real life. But after August I can't just go back to my childhood sanctuary.

I guess Christ will just have to get that much bigger for me.

God Knows So Much More Than I

In the past few months I have become increasingly grateful for my family, and this gratefulness was surpassed more than ever before this week.

My parents have not been very church-y people most of my life, in fact, though I don't doubt their faith, they still don't stand under the traditional church standards, and for this I have usually been ashamed. My family has not really held to traditional standards most of my life and this has led me to sometimes wish I had a different family, but after this week I really don't think I'd wish it ever again.

My friend and I had a crazy idea a week ago today. We decided to go skydiving. IT WAS AMAZING! And instead of freaking out, telling me I was crazy, or suggesting I shouldn't go, my parents told me to have fun and call when I was safely back on the ground. The day of the trip due to my anxiety from the night before and my adrenaline rush during the dive, I was exhausted by 2pm, so when my mom called to congratulate me at 4 I was still kinda out of it. But I think the kicker in the whole situation, the thing that made me truly look at my family in a way I probably haven't seen them before was my aunt posting her status on facebook as a congratulations to me. I couldn't believe it, my whole family actually supports me.

Many of my friends told their parents what I'd done and their parents asked them not to go. Haha... these people tell their kids to stay safely on the ground, my family encourages me to jump out of a plane, and have an absolute blast during the fall back to Earth.

My family's not perfect, far from it, but if there is one thing I hope to pass onto my children that my parents have taught me, it's that the best things in life are scary, hard to face, and probably dangerous, but if you don't do them, then what's the point of living? Looking back on the past 21 (almost 22!!) years, I'm only just starting to realize why God put my where He did.

Dedicated to my mother, father, all the crazy Mexicans I'm related to, and all the crazy white people too. Thank you for all the wonderful support and compliments this week, it has really meant a lot. Much love, Elizabeth-Marie (zibet)