I can't believe some of the things I have written in the past. I still am shocked and amazed when God uses something that came out of my own head a year ago to impact where I stand now. I always wish I were something I'm currently not- and sometimes I even wish I was the person I was a year ago. I don't feel that way very often, but occasionally that thought meanders into my mind.

I am very much not the same person I was a year ago. Granted, I display most of the same behaviors and my defining characteristics haven't changed all that much. But I feel older, I definitely feel older and wiser. Perhaps it is being thrown into leadership in many ways and having to grow up and deal with situations I didn't imagine I'd have to deal with. I think the main difference is that I am actively involved in so much ministry here and my walk with the Lord has become a lot more consistent. I feel less like a girl and more like a woman, which is probably directly tied to getting out of the freshman dorm atmosphere that I disliked so much. I know now how to be myself, and I learned how to laugh at myself and how to purposefully make people laugh by being myself.

I don't know just where I'm going with this. Probably nowhere - that's one thing about me that hasn't changed.

It is good to see how God has answered so many of my prayers. That's one of the ways God uses my writing in my life, and He IS so faithful! In a journal entry a year ago, I was praying for the Lord to provide friendships in my life that would be deep and challenging and important. This year I have struggled with the process of the answered prayer, but standing here in May, at the closing end of the school year spectrum, I can only laugh as I look around me at the meaningful friendships He has overwhelmed me with. I laugh at my foolishness for fearing that He wouldn't provide, and I laugh at the ways it has all worked out. There are so many cases where the friendship just simply wouldn't exist without the Lord's miraculous and direct intervention.

If there's one thing I have learned from God, it is to expect the unexpected. It seems that we often know what to expect (in a general sense) of the end product, but the means of getting to the product are frequently more beautiful and growing than we could ever imagine.