Sixty.

sometimes we have to listen.
other times we have to think on our own.

sometimes we have to decide.
sometimes, delaying is the best choice.

sometimes we are alone.
other times we just feel like we are, because we're not hearing what we want to.

sometimes we right, sometimes we're wrong.

all the time we learn.
we learn who our friends are.
we learn what we're made of.
we learn what's important.
and most importantly, we learn about ourselves.

life: it's about trust, it's about grace, it's about risk, it's about love.
it's about knowing when care is at the core of someones words, and dwelling on that before anything else because you trust their friendship. it's about grace for when we are wrong, and grace when we are right. it's about taking risks when we make a decision and don't know the outcome. and it's about love. loving one another and seeing love in one another.

it's just hard sometimes.

Fifty nine.

Twenty two.

Today I turned twenty two.
It was a very lovely day. All of it.

Fifty eight.

New York and Jesus.

These two things sum up my thoughts right now.

New York.
Yesterday night I returned from a whirlwind adventure in New York, where I attended Mennonite Central Committee's United Nations Office's 13th Annual Student Seminar on Global Food Security. It was super interesting and a great experience all around. I got to lean a lot about a topic I didn't know very much about and also got to see the city and have fun with my friend Jenna. It's a pretty neat place which I plan to return to with more free time and a digital SLR. I came back thrilled with the experience, and definitely thinking really hard about my role as a global citizen and christian when it comes to responding to the various challenges our world faces.

Jesus.
Having been raised in a home devoted to the Christian faith, it struck me and humbled me to realize how little I know Jesus. At one point later in high school, I realized that my faith was based entirely on the convenience of having been raised in that context. After a brief struggle I made the conscious choice to be a person of faith on my own accord. Since then I've had a number of really meaningful experiences and have grown a lot.

But today it hit me how little I've been putting into my relationship with Jesus lately. It broke my heart actually. The realization that my hearts been in the wrong place for a while is both humbling and shameful. I constantly advocate for Christians to not drift into apathy and to consider the meaning of their actions and choices. To not act on Religious Auto-pilot. Then... bam. I realize that I've been drifting that way.

So here we go. Auto-pilot is off. Religion rejected, faith embraced anew, and Jesus and I scheduled for many a friend-date.