a novel

On Sunday evening I was blessed by the opportunity to spend an evening with 3 wonderful woman, to tell stories, to share our lives, and to laugh together until we cried. The reunion of the "Pit of Awesomeness" (my wonderful apartment from junior year) was as epic as could ever be desired. As we drank tea, ate chocolate from Austria, and shared dumpster doven delicacies, we reminisced on the beauty and the pain of life. We had not been together in the same place since April, and yet we fit back together like pieces of the puzzles we worked on diligently each Sabbath on our apartment floor last year. Perhaps it is always so with the best of friends. At one point we talked and laughed and thought and pondered, our topic of conversation drifted to the topic of world events. We discussed stories of pain, of death, or trauma in our world. And as we sat reminiscing on all the violence, that instead of dwelling on the horror in th...

It is a New Year. The calender slips quietly into 2013. January begins again. And I return to the mountain valley that has shaped and molded and challenged and inspired me for one last semester at EMU.  I wonder what this new year will bring, and what challenges, tears, and joys will come in this last new semester of my undergrad degree. I wonder how I will make the most of my time - or better yet, how I will be in the time I have there - and how I will treasure and honor the relationships and friends there who have held and molded pieces of my soul over the past 3 and a half-years. I'm curious how I will apply the lessons and learnings from my months in DC, from my service with Action for Peace Through Prayer and Aid and my work with Shoulder-to-Shoulder, from my experience living with 12 wonderful women and a single man in Brookland, to my life back at EMU. I'm wondering how time spent with family in Europe, in Winnipeg, and in Abbostford has raised q...