Home is where the heart is.

Home.

Currently, this entry is coming to you from the living room condo in Montana. My mom lives here. Half the time. My sisters live here. Sometimes. My heart is here every once in a while.

My dad lives in Colorado in the house that was home until I was 17. My mom lives there. Half the time. My sisters live there. Sometimes. My heart wasn't there for a long time, but I think it often takes a break from my physical self and runs back there.

One summer, I lived in South Korea for three months. Every once in a while I wake up wishing I was there again. If I was braver, I would have considered living there again. My heart is there in a big way, but only sometimes.

I left Southern California with a heart full of bitterness and nothing but a "good riddance" attitude as I packed my car to leave for Montana six months ago. For the most part, I felt like a fish out of water there. The smog, the traffic, the heat, the palm trees...not for me. I realized I just wasn't cut out for LA. I ashamedly admit my attitude towards California continues to get worse and worse and I'm still glad that I left. But I did leave a huge piece of my heart there. I left behind a place of growth, of life change, and of irreplaceable friendships. Fine. My heart is partly in California. Sometimes.

Utah has been home for almost two years now. Had someone told me two and half years ago that I would move to Salt Lake, I would have laughed. But God broke my heart in a major way over a spring break trip in college. A spring break trip turned into a summer internship turned into a heart broken for the lost in Utah.

The tail end of college was spent trying to figure out how to end up in Utah. It seemed that God had given me the go ahead in May, a month ago. So now I'm here, but still planless and trusting, hoping that this is really where God wants me.

But in the end, I'm starting to realize that if not...it's ok. My heart is forever swayed by circumstances. Earthly circumstances. My residency is eternal in a home with a Father who continues to tend to my every need. That...I can live with...where ever.

::For we know that if the tent, which is our earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens::
2 Corinthians 5:1

First time for everything.

Well, I guess in this case a million firsts for some things. This is one of many "first" blog post. I have created, posted, loved, hated, and eventually deleted and sometimes successfully archived at least twenty different blogs. Each has served as a means for remembering the past 8 years- through high school and college and now into whatever this "next step" happens to be.

This "first" happens to catch me as a college graduate completely unsure as to what God has next. But if I've learned anything through keeping track of His fingerprints all over my life, it's that His faithfulness never fails. What better way to be grateful and expectant than to purposefully, intentionally keep track of how He holds me through every step of this particular stage of life.

So a quick game of catch up:

• May 2010 meant college graduation...yikes. I now hold a B.A. in English with an emphasis in Secondary Education and a minor in biblical studies from Biola University. Saying it with that many words just makes it sounds more legit than it actually is.



• January 2011 meant completing student teaching at Downey High School and an official license to teach.



• May 2011 meant the end of four months in Big Sky, Montana helping my family's restaurant.



• June 2011 meant moving to Utah. A place that has had my heart for so long.

And now, an official resident of Utah. Jobless and planless, but hopeful and trusting. Lucky me, my God is a God with a plan bigger than anything I can ever hope or imagine.

::And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose::
Romans 8:28

::Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly that all we ask or think,  according to the power at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen::
Ephesians 4:20-21