Friday October 10th. I've been having a nostalgic day today. When I woke up this morning I was thinking about Ohio University and Athens. This weekend is Homecoming , maybe that's why it was on my mind, but as the day has progressed I continue looking back into my past and the last few years. One thing that I have found recently, is since being here the last two months, I have started going back and looking at old pictures from my life, from the last two or so years, and where I was a year ago today. It's really refreshing to go back and look at where you were and how far you have come. It really gives you perspective. The perspective I have been gaining from doing this is becoming more and more emotional. I realize as I am looking at my pictures from a year ago, I was happy...but I really wasn't. I look into the eyes of the person that looks like me standing in pictures and that person is not me anymore. And I am glad of it. I don't mean that I have really changed who I am. I'm not saying who I was or who I am today are a total 180 from each other and my one year younger self was someone I hated. By no means do I mean that.It has just become more and more clear to me that a year ago I was miserable and I knew it.

 It makes me start to cry when I look at those pictures and then think about me sitting here a year later and just how much my life has changed. I think about how much I forced my life to change, how I fought my way out because I knew I was the only one who was going to make it happen. I am proud of myself for that. I made myself get away from the way I was living before, and I knew a small change here or there wasn't going to be enough. So when the opportunity came in April to join the YAGM Program, I dropped it all and ran full speed ahead to follow my dreams and do 1.what would get me moving in a different direction than the one I was heading, 2. what I had wanted to do my whole life which was A. Visit London, B. Live in another country for a year, and C. Finally pick up the phone and answer the call from Jesus Christ that had been ringing in the background of my life for the last two years. Even sitting here now I am crying because I am just so happy at the decision I made to leave a life that wasn't right for me. I mean I had a good job at a prestigious company that paid well and had great benefits. I had a solid group of friends that I spent lots of time with in the evenings and on weekends. I had a boyfriend, and a nice apartment I could afford, and I was volunteering for a good cause in my spare time. I was living a fairly carefree life in the city with endless possibilities but it wasn't right for me.

In a matter of months, I quit my job, left my friends, gave up a life I was familiar with,  left most of my wardrobe, my bed, and other belongings behind, left my family and packed whatever I could fit in a suitcase and a carry-on for a year and jumped on a plane to start over. And that's what I have been doing since I have been here. Starting over. I left an ideal life at home to find a life that was ideal for me and for God. To find the life that was meaningful to me. I can't explain to you the feelings I feel looking at those pictures from a year ago today and the progression of pictures that I see coming after them. I look at the year 2014 and where I started out this year and what has happened to me in the last 10 months. I already feel like a different person and I'm still changing. I am not changing into a new person, I am changing into me. Instead of warping my identity this year as I thought would happen, I am pealing back layers of distraction that have been the cause of my misery the last few years. I am finally remembering, finding, and discovering the original parts of me that God made me to be and his plan for me. Somewhere in the midst of things, life transitions, changes, life decisions, and figuring life out as an adult, I lost sight of that. Like many of us do. I forgot that who I am and how I want to live is the way God created me to be. I started to believe that in order to help people I had to stop being who I was and live differently to conform to the way I thought others wanted me to live so that I could better understand them and therefore help them. I forgot that the way God had helped me to help others all these years was by being who I was. For me that's going out and meeting people in the world and helping them find themselves like God has for me.
"But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain." 1 Corinthians 15:10