2 Months

If I've said it before, I'll say it again: passage of time here baffles me. As of today, I've been back in the Bulg for two months. Some days being here feels so right and so normal, and other days leave me feeling like it could all be taken away again at any moment. When someone reminds me I haven't actually been here working for the majority of the last year, it almost catches me off guard, but at the same time, the time I spent at home felt like an eternity and a lifetime ago. Hard to believe winter is here, I'm settled in, and I'm ready and waiting to tackle the frigid cold here in the Balkans.

I think I still have to process the journey I've been on the last couple of years. Much of it is surreal, then I remember how amazingly blessed I've been with such incredible opportunities!! How many 23 year olds have spent the time since their 21st birthday working as a gang unit intern with the police department (including a couple - small - undercover assignments and a missing person turned murder case!), and then finding their calling on the streets of NYC living and loving like Christ for 4 months before embarking on the adventure of a life time in Bulgaria with the Peace Corps... then sitting on a plane [unmedicated] alternating between tears and fits of laughter... and realizing it was all being taken away.... for 9 months.... possibly indefinitely... and then ultimately realizing how much it was worth fighting for... and then FIGHTING for it? Now if that doesn't exhaust you but make you super excited, then I don't know what will.

But here I am, missing my friends and family and the life that awaits me back home in a year and a half... but blessed beyond measure and thrilled for the second chance to be here.

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner natuer is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." - 2 Cor. 4:16-18