Coming to and end

Written by discipleoftheway on October 8, 2009 · 2 Comments

So tomorrow marks 2 weeks until I return to Australia. I’ll be honest and up front about it…I am ready to come home. It has been an absolutely AMAZING trip but I am weary of travelling and am ready to try and resume normal life.  As I said to my girlfriend, the travel bug within me has entered hibernation and left me in another country! Still I do have a week in Germany left and also a week in Singapore. It will be good but I am having a hard time enjoying it when my body is telling me to stop. Friday I go to Berlin though and no matter HOW I feel that day I AM going to enjoy it. Berlin is to significant in terms of 21st century history to NOT do it well and I would kick myself for forever and a day if I did not make the most of it.

So some of you are probably wondering what my plans are for when I return to Australia. Let me be honest up front, everything in my life for the next 12 months is about moving to the US. Yes, that is right, I will sadly be leaving the beautiful place that is Australia (recently ranked 2nd best country in the world to live in) because something more beautiful is calling me and her name is Kelsey. Though Kelsey and I have only been together for 2 and a half months, it is abundantly clear to me that she is to play a significant part in my life and as such I am going to move over to at least live in the same town as her until she finishes college in 2012. What happens from there is up in the air.

So when I get back to Aus I will be looking for a short term, fulltime job. As much as I would love it to be in a ministry field I am unlikely to find a ministry willing to hire me from December until June (however if you know any fling them my number or email or tell me!). As such I will probably hit the temp work agencies and HOPE that the GFC has not dried up all the temp jobs. In June I will head over to the US and staff another summer camp. Part of me feels guilty for using summer camp as a means to be with Kelsey (rather than simply going for summer camp itself) but most of me does not. I know I have a lot to offer to the camp in 2010 so although my MOTIVES for going are not entirely focused on camp, while I am there I will be totally committed to making the place the best Christian ministry that it can be.

After camp I will come back to Aus and start the visa process for the US. Exactly what visa I apply for is a fluid concept at the moment. It all depends if I can find someone willing to employ me and so go for an employment visa or if I have to look at other various alternatives. The US is RIDICULOUSLY difficult to immigrate to so we shall see. I imagine it will be 6 months to a year (or sadly possibly more) AFTER I start the ball rolling that I will be able to go over there. So when I get back from camp I intend to work again until I have to leave. This means I will be in Aus for 9 months of 2010…so again if any ministries need someone for that period of time and don’t mind a 3 month hiatus, I’m happy to discuss! Again I am not holding my breath regarding this option and will pursue the temp agency work.

It is safe to say I got what I was looking for out of my big trip, direction. Not quite in the way I was expecting it but that seems to be the way God works in my life! I look forward to the challenges that face me in the next yearor so, least of which is dealing with being SO FAR from the woman I love for the vast majority of the next year or so, which I have to admit is by far the hardest thing I have personally faced. Still, she is entirely worth it.

Once back in Aus I will have regular internet acces as so intend to blog a lot more regularly. I have started a project while travelling. I am notorius for starting projects and not finishing them but I truly hope I stick at this one. I will reveal more at a later date (if I indeed stick to my plan and keep it going) but if I do, I hope to have some discussion on my blog in various area’s regarding it.

For now it is late and I need sleep. Good night world!

Categories: blogging, Life, Travel

Living in 'the haze'

Written by discipleoftheway on September 7, 2009 · 1 Comment

Last week I went along to Kelsey’s college Christian group, ‘Campus Ambassadors’ and met some really cool people. While there I got chatting to the guy who had spoken about ‘the haze’ that God always seems to keep me in. By ‘the haze’ I mean the lack of IMMEDIATE direction, of knowing exactly what I am doing in the immediate future. With things the way they are for me at the moment I keep trying to work out, in my head, how the next 1-2 years might look for me, but as is usually the case God is keeping his plans for this time close to his chest. The guy I was speaking with said he regularly experienced the same feeling. How about you?

We kept talking about ‘the haze’ and we started to talk about how often we pray that God would remove the haze rather than pray that God would help us to live with, even embrace the haze, because as far as I am concerned it is God himself who has placed the haze. When things are certain it can become very easy to rely on my own abilities and not trust in God’s. Also God knows me better than I know myself. He knows that whenever I KNOW he has communicated something to me, I take that and run about 1000 steps when often times he may have only meant me to run 100 steps. The haze keeps me turning to him and stops me overshooting what he has planned for me.

Another aspect to this idea is when I am making decisions I am so concerned with making decisions that will lead to whatever I feel God has in store for me that sometimes I may miss other options God may well either want me to take or be ok with me taking. The haze helps me to have some freedom. It allows me space to take what God has for me and put my flavouring on it, team work almost.

This trip is really growing the haze. I can barely tell you what I’ll be doing in a month from now, yet alone any longer but this trip is also teaching me to be ok with this. This is important because, being honest, the very best part of my trip so far has been something I did not nor could not have planned, I met Kelsey. Who knows what other fantastic surprises are in store for me? I don’t NEED to plan every minute detail of my life…what I need to do is be more concerned with actually living it, learning to be ok with the haze, living with and embracing the haze.

How about you? Have you ever experienced the haze? Is it still a part of your life or has God moved you to a different stage in the journey? Are you feeling suffocated by the haze, rather than working at how to see it as something freeing? Have you thought about the reasons why God may have placed the haze in your life? My prayer for me, and you, is to become ok with living in the haze.

Categories: God, Travel

Much to say but no idea how to even begin!

Written by discipleoftheway on September 2, 2009 · 5 Comments

Over the past few months this blog has been virtually silent. This is mostly because I have not had sufficient internet access but also because, for the life of me I do not know how to even BEGIN to blog what has been going on for me. By this time I highly doubt many people even bother to check my blog, but that is ok.

So, life. I guess the main thing to have come out of my travels so far is the wonderful feeling of knowing I am exactly where God wants me to be. Every time I am experiencing something I realise that this is but another lesson that God is teaching me. To say that my holiday will go down as one of the biggest experiences in my life is to extremely understate what has been happening.

As usual however, God is giving me very little guidance as to what my immediate future holds. There are so many thoughts and idea’s racing through my head but I cannot even begin to imagine what it will look like. As usual I am trying to race through life and as usual God is telling me to slow down. As usual I am so concerned with utilizing my time well that I am not utilizing my time at all. The next year or 2 for me will probably be a very interesting and testing period for me, not least because i will be thousands of miles from the girl I love, but because I am beginning to feel like it will be a time of ‘waiting’, of walking when all I want to do is run. I have plans in my mind as to what my life will look like but they do not always match what God has in store. As far as the next little while goes I have NO idea how it will look, and I have to learn to be ok with that.

I have not even begun to scratch the surface of what is going on for me, but it will have to do for now. Hopefully during the rest of my holiday I can start to at least partly organise the chaos that is my mind. But, as I said at the beginning…the greatest thing I know is that i am STILL exactly where God desires me to be, so that is a good thing going for me.

Categories: Miscellaneous, Travel

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