my shady past

Today, I have found myself thinking a LOT about the dream. The vision that inspired the idea that I could really live abroad out of a bag for two whole years, and the fact that I would want to. It's related so much to the growth I've experienced since I've moved to DC, and more than I thought it would be, to the past that brought me here.

I've decided that I'm going to spend time in reflection over the next few days/weeks on the influences that have brought me this far. And while I can't promise to go in any particular order, there's definitely some recent activity, instigated by individuals who have of late become MAJOR players in the life of A. A, being me. That have me thinking a lot about the future and a lot about the past. But those recent folks aren't going first. Sorry to get your hopes up.

So many know, but some do not, that I was not raised in a Christian home. This is my tired story: that my parents are both interracial and interreligious and so my sisters and I were not Christians. We did not go to church. And I did not know who God was.

But the beauty of this story is that God knew who I was all along and placed just the right people in my life and me in just the right circumstances that I would come to know Him. One of those persons was my best friend, Rachel. We met right before the start of high school, and it amazes me now how we got along so well, when we had so much less in common. But God knows what he's doing. She was the first person who took the time to teach me that God had been patiently waiting for me (but she wasn't the last. I seem to need repeat lessons that God continues to patiently wait for me.)

I truly believe that God has blessed our friendship. We have been separated by geography for more than half of our friendship (six years, actually, and three different countries, two states, and the District of Columbia), but we always seem to join together in conversation or email and rarely but blessedly in person, and just KNOW what the other has been experiencing. Regardless of what I'm doing in my life, or what she's studying in school, how our families are faring, any of that-- we always just understand the other. And this kind of love and support, I think, has helped to prepare me to think that the earthly ties of geography don't have to separate us from our loved ones. We can maintain strong bonds and friendships across foreign lands and oceans. The world is open to me, and although leaving family will be hard, it has become acceptable as one of those 'of this world' things that will not tie me down.

Onward, God. Where are we going?