3 All in the Family

Wow! I am going home to Alabama this weekend. It is a bitter-sweet emotion for me right now. I am loving it here and enjoying being out on my own. At the same time, I do miss my family and friends back home and I do want to see them.
I am glad to be building new friendships and getting to hang out with new people. These new people make me feel like I am at home and they make me feel like I am now part of their family as well. I love the feeling of belonging, even though I am not at home. The people here are doing a very good job of making that feeling possible. I thank you so much for that.
Back home, everyone is missing me terribly but they are starting to make it fine without me. It is a weird feeling knowing that they do not need me, but it is comforting to know that at the same time. It is also nice that everyone back home will still be there for me if i every need them as well as the people here are there for me now to be there when I need someone. They are like my new family and I feel like they love me very much.
I really think that it is neat how God loves me so much that He has provided this new family for me. I know that they are now in my life because God has a purpose for them in my life, and I am very excited to see the impact that they will have on my life.

2 Staying Ahead of the Game

There is getting to be more and more homework and just plain studying to do as each day passes. Coming from having hardly any real responsibilities, it is taking getting some use to get my homework and studies done before going out and doing other things that are no where near as important. I guess the word would be to prioritize. This coming up week, I have three tests and five other assigments that are due, including this one. I had been doing kind of okay with the whole responsibility thing and prioritizing, but this weekend... I decided to be lazy and do nothing but watch movies with my roommate and hang out with a friend from out of town.
Now I am starting to see the need to use most of my free time to work on my homework or work on my studies or sleep! So thankfully it is not to late to start prioritizing for this coming up week, just a little later than I would have wanted. Oh well, at least I am somewhat starting to realize that I need to get my responsibilities straight and start prioritizing early in the year instead of later in the year.
I have started writing all of my homework assigments and tests dates down and study times, so hopefully that will help alot. Also that way I will not accedentally forget something and try to put the blame over on someone else. So that is a great way to start with the whole responsibility thing. Along the lines of prioritizing, I will just have to start making smarter decissions and choices.

1 Not the Best Week Ever

I was so excited about actually going to be able to come to college and just starting another and new part of my life. My first couple of days were absolutely fantastic. I was enjoying myself very much. But some things went down back home after I got here and were starting to effect me and my outlook and everything here and around me. Every time that I would get a phone call I would dread that it would be someone from home and I really didn't want to talk to anyone at all. I wouldn't say that I was depressed, but I definitely was down, and letting everything that was happening in my life back home eat away at me.
This past week I have come to realize that I can't let anything effect me from back home because there is nothing that I can do about it even if I wanted to. So emotionally I started to try to get myself back on my feet so to say because I had been screwed up inside more than I had been in a while. This was somewhat successful but I still was feeling awful.
Then Wednesday I went to youth group at church. The speaker started talking about purpose and vision. I realized that I really hadn't thought of either one of these items, and it really hit me hard. It meant so much to me because I hadn't really thought about finding a purpose or a vision for my life. I just always sort of went with go with the flow. Go where ever life takes me. But at that point, I did realize that my purpose was not to worry about what went on back home, but instead to study and to get to know people and start to make friends. As far as vision goes, I am still looking for that right now. I really have no clue what I want my vision to be. But I do definitely know that I don't just want to go with the flow anymore I actually want to do something important and meaningful with my life.