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| HAHA. I just realized that I have no idea how to use this page to post blogs and stuff... It's definitely been a long time if I can't even remember that... To recap my entire year would be positively atrocious at this hour... so I leave you with the following thoughts on the year that I just went through...
I started teaching; I loved being in the classroom... I loved having the 5 classes... I hated the 2 buildings. It was so hard traveling and making sure all my bases were covered with each... Honestly, one of the hardest things was all the paperwork for both locations... It was like college all over again; only about 10 times worse. One of my department chairs was psycho; the other was getting her divorce finalized (and it's still an ongoing battle)... Gosh, this past year of my life was horrifyingly challenging BUT I walked away being secure in my teaching ability, loving my classes, prepared to try out new techniques when I get back into the classroom after this one-year hiatus, and with a passion for teaching that I didn't realize I still had after this year... I quit my job at the end of the year to pursue a Master's degree in TESOL, one that I will be finishing within a year with a scholarship(!) and an opportunity to work at my former place of employment with co-workers that I still love... God put me through one of the most challenging years of my life and still managed to surprise me with the scholarship and the grad school opportunity... He is amazingly good.
I finally started dating a wonderful, caring man... hahaha :) He really is. Let's just say that God finally said "ok" and confirmed both of our plans in the weirdest way possible but one that was totally original... We have at least 3 separate anniversaries, among others that could just be our "quasi-dating" period... March 20th, May 21st and July 4th... We just passed our Anniversary #3... And I'm still amazed at how God brought us together but for Him to do it in such a way that left me speechless, you know that's definitely God... I asked God to provide 3 different things when I finally realized my own tendencies for emotional dating relationships. I asked that God would provide a man who would be straightforward and honest with me, a man who would keep God in the relationship, and a man who would be willing to wait for God's confirmation. Ironically enough, this all happened rather oddly by my standards and completely normal on God's... So in April of 2007, I attended a sister's baptism and her dinner. At that dinner, I bumped into a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a while. Well, after this dinner, we started talking again and getting reacquainted... During this time, I happened to be involved in an emotional dating relationship that God was going to rupture. God broke all of that up in a really heartbreaking, gut-wrenching experience but ultimately, one that He redeemed beautifully... Well, this friend of at least 7-8 years at the time started IMing me more and more and I found myself liking him again... Now, mind you, I liked this person since the day I met him in around 2000 but it was a little difficult at the time to consider relationships... Regardless, we would chat about a variety of different things and lo and behold, our friendship grew deeper while my heart was in its healing process. Fast forward to Feb of 2009 (a couple days after his 29th bday), he IMed me while I'm sick and DTRed with me... We both agreed we would stay friends, get to know each other better and pray for God's confirmation despite our own feelings. And I'm now in an amazing relationship with this man... He knows me unbelievably well and purposely does things to push my buttons... My parents like him and approve... My nieces and nephews love and adore him... My sister and brother-in-law both approve... Our friends approve... What more could I need? :)
To show evidence of that love...
My niece Chi Chi woke me up yesterday and said...
Ferfer! Where's Uncle Kevin? Can you go drive him here? I want to play with him! Please, ferfer, will you do it?
...and upon his arrival at my house...
My nephew CS sees him and says so nonchalantly...
Hi Kev! [and runs to greet him with a hug]
This one, I'm not surprised by. He will learn to call my bf "Uncle Kevin" in due time. He hasn't mastered the difficult two-syllable words... though he does talk a bit more now. He's turning 3 in Dec.
I'm amazingly blessed in more ways than one.
And with that recap... I'm off to bed. I'm beyond beat [in a tired sort of way] from my long day...
...i need to rest up for there's more work for me to do tomorrow...
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| Life has been really really good... and I'm really happy that God's done so much....
it's just completely amazing... :) i can't do anything but give God praise! He's positively amazing and doing great things. I can see it. I just need to be more diligent! haha, but don't we all?
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| Life's been interesting... The twists and turns that God keeps throwing my way seem too good to be true but are still such amazing blessings! For once, I'm kinda speechless about all of it!  .... Every blessing You pour out, I'll turn back to praise, When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say... Blessed be the name of the Lord, Blessed be Your name... Blessed be the name of the Lord, Blessed be Your glorious name!  It's been quite the year... and I'm excited to see what God's gonna do with the rest of it... Teaching, Fellowship, Music, Relationships with Friends and Family... quite the awesome plan... | | |
| As I sit here reeling from portions of Passion & Purity, written by Elisabeth Elliot... (and surfing through my Visual Bookshelf application on Facebook), a song popped into my head... A song that was sung by Brenda Salter McNeil at Urbana 2006 in St. Louis... I'll say Yes, Lord, Yes To Your will and to Your way I'll say Yes, Lord, Yes I will trust You and obey When Your Spirit speaks to me, with my whole heart, I'll agree... And my answer will be Yes, Lord, Yes... I realize that this may be quite odd but now that the song is stuck in my head once again, I'm reminded of a challenge I received from a sister of mine to embrace what God has placed in front of me. She mentioned to me that it may be my own fear that is causing me to kinda not get involved too deeply with anyone because I'm fearful that this friendship I'm currently in will turn into an emotional dating relationship that I had to give up last year. I'm so afraid that this relationship, though nothing like the last one, will turn into another fiasco that I want to avoid... She challenged me to jump in with faith that God will be there no matter what happens. At this point in my life, I'm starting a teaching job and as a first-year teacher, it'll take up an insane amount of time. And as I've said in previous posts, I don't want to rush God nor do I want to act on just my feelings that continue to grow... It's been pretty clear to me that we shouldn't act on just our feelings and really rush God in any of this and continue to wait. Maybe it is because I'm scared that this relationship won't work out and that's what gives me pause. And while that's a legitimate fear, I know that God doesn't want me to live in that fear. Yes, He may say "no" but I'm called to trust that when and if He says "no," He's got my back and will continue taking care of me... Either way, regardless of what happens between us, God will do as He sees fit and if it does mean a dating relationship comes out of it, then great! If it doesn't, He'll continue making our paths clear as to where we should be... There's no doubt in my mind that God won't continue being faithful to both of us, no matter what comes out of this growing friendship... God will always be there and He will continue to restore my heart from that fiasco last year... It's all about taking that chance knowing that God's going to be there in all of this. He's in it right now with us. I have confidence in the fact that God may say "yes" because it's a good thing that He wants both of us to share but He'll make it clear for both of us as we continue on with this thing... I'm choosing to embrace this challenge to not live in my fear of "what if." Regardless of where God directs me, I'm choosing to say "Yes, Lord, Yes." | | |
| So these past couple weeks have been interesting, to say the least, but give me more opportunities to thank God for all He's gotten me through... I recently contacted a friend that has spent the last year of her life in Germany, doing International Relations at the Embassy or something like that. Either way, I still recall vividly one of our catch-up sessions in April/May-ish about 2 months before she up and left... My senior sendoff tribute to her was asking who would take her place as a confidante about all my relationship issues... And she said to me that night at dinner, "Jen, I can't wait to see where you're going to be in a year... Will you be going to Spain, pursuing your Master's? Are you going to be here in NY? I wonder where you'll be a year from now..." As she prepares to return to NYC on July 17th, I am going to make plans to catch her up on the last year of my life... and in light of that, I have to go back to April of last year... I know, I know... I do this a lot... But bear with me, I have a bit too much to be thankful for and that's always a great thing... In the latter part of my junior year, God chose to enlighten me about a friendship gone haywire... I hadn't actively guarded my heart and though I definitely tried to do so, I guess in a manner of speaking, I always kinda still had that hope there until God kinda tapped me on the shoulder during one of our fellowship gatherings to confirm that this person wasn't right for me and that He had someone better suited to complement me... That weekend was one of the hardest weekends that I never ever want to go through again... I spent the entire weekend bawling my eyes out and asking God the inevitable question... "why?" Not only "why" but "why are You asking this of me?" and in praying about the DTR I was to have with this friend of mine, God placed on my heart the importance of sisterhood and the amazing ways my sisters could help me and how I could contribute to this sisterhood... Not that I didn't before but He showed me just how much I had valued this person's friendship over all of my other friendships and depended on him for more than my sisters and how wrong that was... In other words, God asked me to stop emotionally dating this person and just put an end to hoping that something would happen... He asked that I truly rely on Him and my sisters to heal and guard my own heart and restore it... Through this entire experience, I realized that there is true beauty in being broken and seeing God restore something I thought wasn't reparable and making something beautiful out of it... Over the summer, I tried my best and successfully met up with some of my sisters to help them ease me through this process of healing... I started my senior year and student teaching and all of that fun stuff only to realize that I would now have to see this person during fellowship and be okay with just saying 'hi' and not going into deeper conversation but God was good... He slowly started reshaping and rebuilding that friendship and though we don't talk as much as we once did, I know that I will always have a lot of things in common with this person and all in all, that's perfectly fine... Coming into the second semester of senior year, God had a couple surprises on the horizon... Really nice surprises :) that made Psalm 37:4-5 real to me... "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust Him and He will do this." I surrendered my heart and my wishes before God, knowing that He could say "no" and that He could ask me to give up more... And life is good... I'm being challenged to really give God everything as I go into a new career where I'm shaping kids' futures and undertaking more responsibility... I'm being asked to just wait patiently and see where God's going to lead... Life is really really exciting... I'm quite thrilled to catch Susana up on the latest year of my life once she gets back... :) I really do miss her dearly and all of her crazy antics... It's a nice place to be... waiting for God to lead instead of always trying to get your way and butt heads with God because ultimately, He'll find a way to get you to do what He wants you to do... | | |
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