This Is Only the Beginning..

When I first started this blog, I sent the link to several friends and family members so they could follow me throughout my trip to South Africa. One of the friends that received the link was a new acquaintance and secret admirer.

A couple weeks before I flew to South Africa, a random guy from church sent me a text. I didn't know it at the time, but that text would be the start of a lifetime relationship.

I spent 2 years at that church without ever saying much to him besides hello and goodbye. When we finally had a full conversation, we realized it was a little late. I sent him the link and told him he could stay updated with what I was doing and we would email, but I didn't think much would happen.

Now here I am wearing a ring that represents my decision to unite my life with his.

Some say it's too soon, and even for us it feels short, but the journey was actually quite long. The more I get to know him, the more I see how God has shaped our lives and led us to become who we are today. When he decided to propose, my dad told him God had formed me for him from the very beginning. Five years before I was born, my future husband was born. After all the twists and turns of life, it was finally time for us to meet and then finally time for us to talk and then finally time for us to date.

Still, this is only the beginning......and I can't wait for the rest of our life to unfold. God is good.

Things Come Together

I once read a book called Things Fall Apart. It talks about a group of people and describes how their life slowly falls apart with several different problems. This weekend at camp I saw that things fall apart in our life sometimes, but, other times,things really come together.

It's amazing how God can do things through us when we give Him our all. A couple months ago this idea about camp came to my head and last weekend it actually happened. I was so nervous the day before because I really had no idea how it would go. The group of youth that went are kind of a random bunch and we've struggled to get activities going, but it warmed my heart to see how they got closer together each hour we spent at camp. We started the day sitting at separate tables with our comfortable groups and ended it squishing everyone onto one table and talking through the night.

Each person at camp brought their own awesomeness to the group and I truly enjoyed my time with them. As leaders we had ideas about how we would like it to go, but God had better things in mind. Saturday night left us with wide open mouths and hearts glowing with joy.....If our God is for us, who can be against us?

seasons of mourning

Is it considered strength even if it is the only way you will survive?

Is it considered courage even if you have no other choice?

Is it considered perseverance even if you have wanted to give up all along?

Is it considered life when you are dying every day inside?

It is in our lowest moments that the highest of our character comes out, but even then it is not us, it is Him.

Fool of a Took

Watching the extended version of The Lord of the Rings with my roommates....

Another sunny day in southern California....

The textbooks get longer and longer, but I somehow manage to get through them ....

Finding myself falling in love with a boy that was once a mere stranger...

The birds never cease to sing...

God's love surprises me every day....

I sit in a classroom as a teacher in training remembering when I was a student on the other side of the spectrum...

A pint of ice cream soothes my craving...

The sweetest strawberry fills my taste buds with flavor...

It's the simple things in life that make it so amazing. It's the strangest moments that remind me how blessed I am to be alive.

Where Does My Allegiance Lie?

When I was getting deep into my teenage years I developed an obsession with England. I don't know exactly how or why it started, but everything in my mind revolved around England. I loved everything I learned about the country and I drew the flag everywhere. I told my mom I would one day go to college in England and I dreamed about meeting a guy with a British accent that would steal my heart. I planned to visit Buckingham palace and I fell in love with every British author I read. Jane Austen became my role model and I soaked in every bit of history that dealt with the kings and queens of England.

Around that time, the world cup started and I cheered with all my heart for the England team. I drooled over David Beckham, Wayne Rooney, and Peter Crouch, thinking they were the best soccer players in the world and my heart broke a little when they were eliminated. My dad traveled to Israel in those days and his flight stopped in London for a couple of hours. He didn't leave the airport, but he brought me a key-chain as a souvenir of the country and I held it in my hand like it was the greatest treasure I had ever received.

I ended up not going to college in England and I gave up the opportunity to study abroad in Oxford because I went to study in South Africa instead. I can't pin point the time when my obsession stopped and I still cheered for England a bit in the most recent world cup, but nevertheless I know I am no longer obsessed with that country.

It's funny how we can grow to love a country that's not even ours. Over the summer I read about Uruguay and I watched Forlan play for his underdog country. A small crowd of people from Uruguay gathered to celebrate and they looked so proud of their country. I thought another England-like obsession would start, but it didn't.

There's this tiny little country in Central America that I sometimes wish I was more obsessed with. It's not the greatest country in the world and it's filled with poverty and violence, but it's also filled with beauty.

I have no connection to England when it comes to family trees and ancestors. I have this connection to El Salvador that is very close in line, but I still feel like I can't completely call it my own. As much as I want it to be my country, I don't live there, I don't eat there, I don't work there. Everything I get from it is a second-hand experience. One of the many things my parents gave up when they came to the United States is the culture of their children. I will never understand what it fully means to be Salvadorian because I haven't felt its rain. What I catch is the water that drips off a roof's edge that seems like a raindrop, but has been tainted by something else first.

If I went to the world cup final and it miraculously was El Salvador vs. U.S.A. (this final is very unlikely to happen considering the fact that El Salvador has only been to the world cup twice and the U.S.A. hasn't been able to get past the quarter finals) I have no idea who I would cheer for.

My American friends think I'm abnormal because I can speak a different language and I eat food they've never heard of. My Salvadorian friends think I'm a traitor for letting myself be Americanized. There's no winning when you're a second generation American.

Over the hills and through the woods...

...to grandmother's house we go.

I will never forget visits to my grandmother's house. All 11 of my cousins would get together, excited to see each other after months of being apart, and release energy that had been bottled up inside our tiny bodies in the 6 hour care ride. After all the hugs and kisses and a warm meal provided by the best Salvadorian chef in the world (grandma), we found ways to entertain ourselves.

One particular night we decided the best way to use up our energy would be to have a massive wrestling match on abuelita's bed, every child on his own against everyone. The rules were non-existent and the number of children flying off the bed seemed to increase with every minute that went by. If we fell, we got back up and we scrambled on top of each other fighting to get to the top.

I don't know how we made it out alive or where our parents were(probably having cafe con pan and listening to the blasting music of various trios and duos) that they didn't see us and stop the potentially dangerous chaos.

Although our grandmother is no longer with us, we continue to meet and find entertainment. The reunions are quite different now and time seems to be speeding by. It amazes me to see us applying to college, getting our license, working, getting cars, and going out into the real world. As one of the oldest I get to see my cousins grow up and I remember wondering how we would all turn out. Time keeps ticking away.....but I enjoy every moment. Whether it's filled with screaming children, or dancing teens, the reunion is always worth the drive.

I Would Much Rather Sit in a Box

Lately I seem to have more and more of those days when I'm completely stressed out. On one of these troubled days I looked at my roommate Audrey and said, "I just want to sit in a box for the rest of my life and not move." She asked if she could join and I decided to be nice enough to let her. That was our best solution for dealing with all of life's problems.

I miss those good old days when I could build a fort out of blankets and any random thing I could find in my room and just pretend to be somewhere else. I would make up a different world and live in it for a couple of hours completely unaware of the difficulty of reality.

I'm not that old, some might argue I'm not old at all, but those days are long gone and every morning I have to face the world once more and realize I no longer have the luxury of escaping into fantasy. Each day brings with it more decisions and responsibilities. I no longer work to have some cash for outings with friends; I work to eat and sleep on a comfortable bed. I no longer read to find out how Charlie won the chance to enter the beloved chocolate factory; I read as part of my training for the field work I will do tomorrow. Graduation is around the corner and I will cease to be a student. For 14 years of my life all I have known is the life of a student. Sure, I will continue dealing with school because of my choice of career as a teacher, but it will be on a different end.

Crawling up into a box would be so easy and convenient. I would love that so much, but I would hate it because when you are in the box you miss out on quite a lot. The more time I waste in fantasy, the more I will miss out on living a real life. It's time to leave innocence behind and to work. But I will always find comfort in those beautiful words: If God is for us, who can be against us? and if our God is with us, then what can stand against?