"Life Starts All Over Again When it Gets Crisp in the Fall"

So, this is embarrassing. Not only was I too lazy to keep up this blog appropriately, but I am also conceited enough to assume that people would read it if I did. Seriously, in this age of self-obsessed social media consumerism, internet readers have a plethora of highly intelligent, informed, substantial sources to peruse, as well as an infinitely larger number of ill-informed but very humorous sources available for light reading and a hearty chuckle.

So why continue? I suppose it is more for myself than anything else. I am terrible at journaling, I find it extremely boring and a little embarrassing, (my last visit home included an honorary "diary burning" - it was liberating.) But I want to be able to look back and see where I have been, and observe the crazy journey that I am traveling.

It is also for those few, dear, dedicated friends and family members who do actually attempt to keep tabs on where I am at any given time in my life. (My sympathies and deepest gratitude to you for your selfless love and determination in this daunting task.) I can barely remember my current zip code, much less keep track of anyone else right now.

So for the necessary detail updates: I am currently living in Edinboro, PA (30 minutes south of Lake Erie), and attending the graduate school at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. I am in the Secondary School Counseling Master of Arts program, live on campus, and work as a Graduate Assistant in the counseling office, as well as serving lattes to bleary-eyed college kids in the library cafe every morning.

I am loving where I am at right now, (more about that miraculous story later - suffice it to say that I am "supposed" to be at a seminary in Boston right about now, but God has a funny way of totally turning my world upside down now-and-again). The area is rural and gorgeous, surrounded by wild mountains and serene lakes, but with a TJ Maxx and Panera Bread just half-an-hour up the highway! The weather is as erratic and fierce as I had been warned. Just two weeks ago I was basking in the comfortable warmth of early autumn. Then it snowed. On October 23rd. We got several inches in the matter of a few hours.

I love it.

I couldn't stop grinning while I poured coffee and served donuts at the library cafe this morning, huge white flakes blowing past the giant windows in the seating area. The locals all groaned, claiming that we are in for one heck of a winter; the undergrad girls whined, carefully-straightened hair wrecked by the damp flurries, and I just grinned. This is my kind of place. While I love the metropolis for its provision of every possible want or need and its close proximity to everything and everyone, I adore the untamed, unpredictable north. At the risk of waxing-Gaskell, I feel like there is a north in me that I will never be able to shake.

When I mention such whimsies to my friends, the majority groan and list all of the reasons that a retreat south of the equator would be more favorable. I am reminded of Margaret Hale's first impression of the north of England, in Elizabeth Gaskell's classic, North and South. 

“I wish I could tell you how lonely I am. How cold and harsh it is here. Everywhere there is conflict and unkindness. I think God has forsaken this place. I believe I have seen hell and it's white, it's snow-white.” 

Well, I wish I could tell all of you how contented I am. How welcoming this place has been to me, how the harshness of the way of life up here is mediated by the warmth in the hearts of those people breaking a living out of this hard ground. I know that God is in this place, I think I've seen a glimpse of heaven, and it is white, it's snow white.