Time.

Today marks 6 months in Germany. Tomorrow starts the next 10 months. I don't feel happy and I don't feel sad. I feel led. Led in the perfect direction. It's an invisible direction, but I've always liked a good adventure! When I was a little girl I had a very special journal. It had a lock and key on it and inside I would write with an invisible ink marker. The only way to see the writing was to shine a special purple light over the paper. I was sure no one would ever read my secrets but me. Then I lost the purple light and in turn, all my invisibly written secrets. What I see now is that God wrote my path with those nifty invisible ink markers and I'm the purple light that shines over the story. My story! I only ever see what is right there in front of me, one word at a time, but it is enough. I believe there is more coming and I believe it is beautiful. Today I want to share a story about forgiveness because it has greatly affected the last 5 years of my life and especially this past week has been on my heart and mind. I have spent the majority of my teenage years in bitterness and anger. What I believed to be justifiable anger. My father made some grievous choices in my childhood, choices that created a rift in the family. Choices that tore me apart. Choices that quite literally threw me to the ground, denying my heart all the answers and affirmations I yearned for as a little girl. Not just the big moments, but the small moments I still crave. Sitting on his lap and reading a story. Getting a kiss goodnight. Being told how beautiful I am. I can't say I don't need that anymore because that is a giant lie. I want and need it still, even as an adult. I want my father to be my father. But that was tucked away and stomped flat inside my heart as I grew up. I learned to wake up each morning and start over. Forget yesterday, let today happen so I could forget it and fall asleep. I honestly believed that being independent, strong and emotionless was admirable. Sadly, all it created in me was bitter anger and a locked up heart. Dancing took out pieces of the darkness in me. Sometimes against my will, I would spill my emotion through the movements, recall moments of sorrow that I had buried long ago. They were covered in dirt and tears and I kept trying to dance them away. Dancing spilled them, but dancing could never heal them. So that left me in the middle of my ravaged heart, staring around at the emotions and darkness that had spilled out with no way of going back in. They lay blatantly at my feet, daring me to approach them. So I did. I took the long journey of crouching down and taking one at a time. Giving it my attention, affirming truths, removing lies, allowing Jesus to heal the broken fragments of my soul. But oh no, that journey is far from over. I reached a turning point at the age of 18 when the path of my heart had been cleared. That is when I truly forgave my father in the presence of God. I felt released from my anger. But I was drawn into confusion as I believed forgiveness would bring me complete healing. And that, it did not do. The last 2 years I have continued to experience sorrow and confusion as I struggle to push past the barrier of my grief. But then Jesus stopped me. He stopped me abruptly, sat me down and made me listen to Him. Here is what he taught me: I might spend my whole life forgiving my father over and over, every time I feel bitterness. Forgiveness will not take away my pain. It will not take away the gravity of how he affected me and it will not take away what he did to me. But it will take away my anger and turn it into sorrow. And it did. I have sorrow, I have grief, I have a longing that might never be fulfilled on this earth. But I am released from my bitter spirit. I can honestly pray for my father and not be tainted by unrighteous anger. I'm sad for him. I'm sad that I don't have the daddy I wanted to have. I have a daughter's love for him that rests in my heart, waiting. I pray and hope that one day he will be redeemed and brought to the arms of Jesus. Lord-willing, I will be there to see it and be united on earth with my father, even if for one day. I would normally not write this publicly for the sake of my father. But this is not written against him in any way. I am not angry with my father. I love him and this is a confirmation that no matter what, I will continue loving and forgiving until the day I'm brought to my heavenly Saviour's arms. And He loves me, every inch of me, oh so much.

Daily chocolate quantities exceeded

Last week I opened my door to a lovely layering of snow atop the trees and covering the garden. I gasped and ran to grab my camera. That was my very first time seeing snow in Germany! At the end of January...crazy. It was a foggy, frosty delightful sort of morning. After I had finished marveling, I grabbed my coat and biked to the bakery to get the rolls while the snowflakes swirled around me, creating a fantastic blindfold, but lovely all the same. Once I got home I went to the kitchen and when Jojo came in I smiled and said, "Look outside, Jojo." She glanced nonchalantly at first but then her eyes expanded and she ran up the stairs yelling, "Gary, du glaubst das nicht, du glaubst das nicht!!! Komm schnell!" After which commenced a thunderous pounding of their tiny feet down the stairs as they ran to the kitchen window and examined all the magic spread before their eyes. After breakfast, I took a 2 hour walk through the fields and smiled, prayed, thought about weird things and enjoyed plodding through the powdery trails. I also ate some snow off a branch. It brought me back to the days when mom was so annoyed at the piles of snow all of us kids consumed that she took a big glass dish and melted the snow so we would see all the seeds and dirt and stop eating it. It never quite did the trick. We continued to hurl ourselves into the piles of snow on the deck and eat our way out.


My second semester of school started this week and ends in June. I enjoyed my bike ride but what I enjoyed a bit less were the endless layers needed to block out the cold. The last 2 weeks have been the only time I've truly been cold here. Last weekend I travelled to Bonn and met with some friends to see a concert. We walked through some streets and stopped at a corner that I would have passed by without noticing, but upon closer look there was, in fact, a bar. The minute I walked in it was as if objects were magnetized to my eyes one at a time, zooming in and catching my attention. First I noticed the wooden rafters that created an oddly pleasant claustrophobic atmosphere. Next came zooming to me the oldest piano I've ever laid eyes upon. After that was a rusty sewing machine propped in a corner, and lastly were the couches perched on a slightly raised platform. I enjoyed some wonderful folk music, wonderful people and had a flaming shot of Sambuca spill all over my jeans. All in all a memorable evening! The trains didn't get us to Dusseldorf until the middle of the night and I took a bus to my friends place during which we spoke with a crazy guy! Every time I asked him a question he would shove a handful of fries into his mouth. I finally dropped onto a mattress sometime after 3:30 and slept for 5 hours. Woohoo. But the upside is I got to ride on my friend's motorbike to church!!! That was sensational. I want one.


Karneval is beginning to begin and I'm really excited! It's time for me to collapse into the warmth of my bed. As always, I miss you all! Katie, I'm so proud of you for getting accepted into Marymount Manhattan College and will be praying for you. Mom, you somehow manage to make sense of my ramblings and questions and sort through all the thoughts and notions in my crazy head. Thanks for that! I love getting advice from you. To end this I would just like to say that sometimes I get a bit down about practically everything, but at this moment when I looked back to August 2011 I can smile and see how much I've grown, changed, and been strengthened. I am so immensely thankful for the opportunity to have this time away and experience the world. I feel very small sometimes, the more I see and learn about the world. But sometimes being small is quite fun.