Auburn

Written June 24, 2007 on the way to Juarez, Mexico...

So my heart strings are being pulled again by that small town in Alabama. I have just realized once again how passionate I am about going there and how I can't help it. I can't help but think that a desire this strong is more than something I want but that perhaps it is a calling. I don't ever feel that I have had a calling to do something, per say, but this is very heavy on my heart. I talked a lot with Mrs. Pat and Mr. Dan on the way down to Mexico and they really gave me some good insight into living life and being happy with what you do and having no regrets. They talked a lot about doing what you want while you can and that really struck me. I don't want to live with regrets because i plan on college being the most exciting and adventurous time of my life. I want to be going and meeting new meeting new people and new places and experience things that I haven't before. I don't want to be afraid of going to a new place and not meeting people because that is my challenge and if God can make it to where I do go to new places, then I have faith he will take care of me there. I don't want to live in fear of having a good job that pays extremely well. I know the LORD will provide for me but I don't know it well enough to live it. All I want is to live a dynamic life honoring the King and helping others do that exact thing and in a passionate, contagious way. I don't want to be boxed in and if i feel that way at Harding then things must change.

So again, later today I have been thinking about my early motives for Auburn. I thought of how I wanted to do engineering, how Jonathan and I were gonna go together, of the friends I talked to that got me so excited about this place, about simply starting over and getting away to a new place, and of course the gut feeling that I developed about it. We stopped for lunch and I told my Dad about how I had been turning this over in my head all the way down to Abilene and his reaction surprised me. He asked me why I gave up on it earlier. That really got me going about what happened and why I pulled up on pursuing it. When things fells through with Jonathan and engineering, I really backed off. I really just gave up on it. But I look back at all of my reasons and I see that I let some pretty serious ones get away from me. My main desire to go there initially was to start over, to go to this new place that I have heard so much about. This place that would take me away from home and allow me to grow as an individual like never before. Then I visited and found out for myself how amazing it really was. But I let those go. The student center, tradition, town, campus, atmosphere..I let other things beat those down. I prayed earlier about it because I know that I am very lost about it. I prayed for patience, peace and understanding. I feel as if my will to actually do this is twice as much as it was and I cant help but think that God is saying something to me about this. There is nothing I can do physically for a while so I am giving this solely to God. I will simply wait and pray. Also, I know I have to take care of business at school to show my parents that it is worth it to send me, academically speaking, so that if the chance does come then I will be prepared to jump. I also think I can start being more responsible with my money because if this does happen then I will definitely need to do some maturing with my spending, along with me studying. Lastly, I need a plan for my major so that by Christmas when the time comes to seriously evaluate this plan I will have some idea of what will happen if I chose to move. It is going to take some growing up but maybe that is just the plan that God has. Maybe it is his underlying theme of all the madness this plan has in store.