these are a few of my favorite things.

I have been in Fort Mill, SC & Charlotte, NC (they are right up against each other) for a full weekend now.  It is starting to feel a little bit less like another weekend trip and a bit more like I am here to stay.  I welcome that feeling entirely because I have felt too much like I’m bobbing around every which way and not settling somewhere very long.  It has been in the last year that I’ve stopped desiring to live in a new state every year and having more longing to settle into a place and dig into the people and the culture there. I’m praying I can stay here a good long while, but I’m not about to rush this year.

The weekend has been a success in my opinion.  My host family, the Strykers, are awesome!  Matt and Angie have great big servant hearts. They’ve opened up a large bedroom (with a large closet and my own bathroom) with a big comfy bed for me to stay in and the rest of the house for me to roam free in. The joy they radiate is contagious.  And their kids (Jack age 4 and Valerie age 2) are adorable and are warming up to me more and more.

I have had the opportunity to make a few friends whom I’m looking forward to hanging out with soon, I hope.  We played a rousing game of Blockus and then sat down to make fun of shows like River Monsters.  I haven’t laughed that hard for that long in a good while.

Last night and this morning were wonderful times with my new LifePointe family.  Between watching Toy Story 2 with them on the lawn of Southwest Middle (a.k.a the Steel Creek campus) and meeting welcoming folks at the Steel Creek services and “Starting Pointe” I am feeling welcomed into the family.

Then this evening out of the blue (no pun intended…or maybe it was…) a storm arrived.  I’m silly and storms kinda freak me out so since I had the house to myself I curled up in my jammies to watch Up.  I quite like nights like this (the only thing that was missing was a pepperoni pizza!).  But once the movie ended and the Strykers arrived home I noticed out the kitchen windows that golden clouds were announcing the arrival of what appeared to be a miraculous sunset.  When I looked outside to get a better look I saw a bright rainbow arching across the sky.  I anxiously ran upstairs to tell Jack and Valerie and when I looked out my own bedroom window I nearly cried at the beauty of it.  (The clouds were brilliant shades of yellow, pink, purple, blue and orange. and the rainbow, while it was bright, had an amazing affect by making the clouds inside it a different hue than what was outside of it.)  God’s promises were overwhelming; God’s love was written everywhere in that sky.

As I stood there, glued to the window pane, I remembered a conversation I had had with my friend, Molly, earlier this evening.  After I recounted to her my time here thus far she asked, “how does that make you feel?”.  For a moment I tried to figure out exactly what this emotion was that I was experiencing.

With a smile I replied, “peace.”