20 years on earth…

I turned twenty two weekends ago, and I’m beginning to realize how tough life is. My family seems to be doing ok, despite three members having surgery (my sister, my brother-in-law, and my grandma on her knee). I feel the geographical distance from my family as I continue life here at Biola. On my birthday I went to church, but didn’t do anything special that day. Yeah, my friend did forget my birthday and it hurt, but he is still my best friend. Yeah, I’ve seen people going through things at Biola: depression, broken relationships, confusion, anxiety, families struggling spiritually, and more. My Torrey group is getting ready for a big change: next semester we are loosing our three nursing majors, Nancy, Jesse, and Monica. Next year we’ll all be moving around groups. This is the last semester of the full Ignatius family. Today I got a text that told me that John, from my Torrey group, broke both his wrists, his hip, and his forehead above his eyebrows while in LA yesterday. He’s in the hospital right now, getting ready for surgery on Sunday. Stacy and I are visiting him tomorrow. On top of this I got an email that was accusing Biola of bad theology. I know God has placed me at Biola and I have seen him move on this campus, and the critique was against some important stuff we do. This came while reading Calvin, who disturbed me, not because of predestination, but because of some wholes in some of his thoughts. On top of this there is the stress of school work, relationships, and the battle to get enough sleep.

Yet in light of all of this, God is still God, good and sovereign.

Tonight was my third GYRAD this week. Last Friday I went on Kimbo’s GYRAD. We went lazer tagging at Lazer Quest and dressed up to match. Kimbo and I were SOS leaders. Luke and Mary Beth came dressed up as an old couple, a favorite dress up of Mary Beth and mine. Afterwards we went to Sonic’s and got some burgers. It was a lot of fun.

The next morning I had to get up to go clean out the Missions Conference shed. That was fun. All the cords worked for about three hours taking stuff out, putting stuff on the lawn, have people come by thinking it’s a garage sale, inventorying, then putting everything back in. It was hot, but we got it done.

Right after that I went to my Total Torrey Bible session at Dr. Reynold’s house. It was pretty good, but I didn’t get to do it with my normal group, plus our group talked about marriage the whole time… or more like Dr. Reynolds talked about marriage the whole time. He’s really smart, so it was nice to just take stuff in and evaluate it. He knows that we aren’t going to do things rashly, so he said if we needed to we should get married this weekend. He really likes to pressure us, but in a good way.

That Sunday was my floor’s GYRAD. I went with Monica. We drove down to Longbeach and painted pottery, which we haven’t gotten back yet, and Monica hasn’t put the picture up of it yet. We painted a plate with African stripes, put the Dharma Initiative logo around it, and painted the Lion King head in the middle, calling it The Lion Head Station. We walked out when we were done and had pizza next door. There was just enough time when we were done to go to karaoke for a little bit before Monica and I had to be back at Biola for our meetings.

Lately my friend circles have been changing/expanding/ I feel like I’m hanging our with new people this year. I used to hang out with people like Devon, Lindsey, Ashley, Sara, Nick, and others last year, but I haven’t seen some of them this year at all. Instead I’ve been hanging out with Janine, Kyle, Cale, Cari, and Cody (though not a ton lately). I love the new people I hang out with, but I also really miss my old friends. I need to learn balance and how to manage relationships. To all those at home reading this or anyone who feels neglected by me, I’m sorry. I do love you and I probably really want to talk with you, but I’m bad at being really social. It’s not in my introvert nature.

Anyways, the week went by fairly smoothly. Thursday night Kaleigh, Ann Marie, Monica, and I went the the Premiere of Harry Potter 7 part I and it was incredible! I cannot express how great it was! It was really dark, but followed the book (the little that I’ve read of it) and had tons of content. The crowd was fun to watch it with, as we laughed at the impeccable humor which was better than any of the other humor in the other movies. This movie had to have the best humor because it was also the most depressing. It has no sunshine. Everything is sad, dark, and twisted. It doesn’t have the jolly feel of the other movies, with the golden colors of Griffindor, but had grey and blue hues. Just go see it.

Today I had Pho for the first time. I had heard from my dad that he got really sick when he had it. I had a GYRAD later today and I really didn’t want to get sick, so I was a little nervous, but I wanted to do something with ISA and get a free lunch. I ended up finding out why my dad got sick: he had the raw meat meal where they put raw meat in hot water that cooks it. That wouldn’t sit well in my stomach. Instead I had precooked food and it was pretty good.

Ok, so all the decorations were down by this point, but they were pretty legit

Tonight I went on Monica’s GYRAD. We had a good time, even though Monica was super busy because she was the RA running it. The thing was a murder mystery masquerade. They did a pretty good job of putting it on. I think there were a hundred candles along with Christmas lights and tons of other things. It’s definitely a different experience being the RA’s date, but I still had fun. Plus we had already had a GYRAD together this week. At the end we cleaned up and headed back to Biola.

This week has been pretty packed with stuff, and more stuff is to come. It’s going to be weird going home, but I am so excited to be back. I love and miss my family, even though I am having so much fun down here.

The first twenty years of my life were fairly peaceful, but this twenty first year is starting out at a fast pace, full of turbulence and excitement. I am enjoying life, even the hard parts. God is teaching me about his total control so that I can make it through this time of life. So even though I’ve been here on earth for twenty years, God’s plan has been in place for beyond eternity. This is the God I worship and this is the God who is my Father. He has divinely put people in my life, and not just my biological family, but my spiritual family, the Church. God has blessed me with people like my parents, my sisters, my brother-in-law and his family, my Torrey group and every member of it, Mat, Luke (roommate, and the one down the hall), my entire floor, the Torrey community, Missions Conference staff, my mentor Dr. Thoennes, and so many more. There is no accident or chance in this, but God’s fatherly provision. Praise be to God.