This Small World

On Monday, I hung out with the girl who prayed for me at Summer Madness about a month ago. We found each other on Facebook and agreed to meet in Belfast and hang out for a bit. I really needed it because I have been really struggling a lot - with faith, with God, with being alone, with being away from home, with meaninglessness, with salvation, with death, with eternity, with wasting my time (what my calling actually is/what I'm supposed to be doing down here anyway, though this is becoming less and less of a question and "how on earth can I know the love of God" is taking its place - probably a good switch, I think) and money (the exchange rate just went up and this is really, really stressing me out)...yeah.
It REALLY helps me, on one level (and we won't explain the other levels right now), to talk with people - even if we didn't talk about any of that stuff. We actually talked about the lady I'm staying with - she is difficult for me to be around for a variety of reasons and so, I'm actually so glad that tomorrow is my last full day here in Northern Ireland (I leave early bells for Switzerland Friday morning and it's going to be a relatively long day of travel...). But, the reason we could talk about Sally is because the girl I hung out with today - Ashleigh - is really good friends with her daughter, Chrissy. It is Chrissy's room I've been staying in for the past month or so, and it was helpful to hear that it wasn't "just me" that thought Sally was really strange/difficult.
Anyway, despite my soul-cracking struggles over here, it was REALLY good to be with Ashleigh, even if only for a few hours. We do need people (as my pastor says, we need each other deeply), but I'm learning what exactly we need each other for...

Also, last night and into the wee hours of the morning, I got to talk to my "dad". For 6 hours. It was so awesome. And I've sensed a real, deep-solid changing in him, too. He was always awesome, but now, the gentleness I knew was there is coming out, I was a bit stunned by his soft humility and by his self-awareness (at one point, he apologized to me for not re-presenting Christ very well...). Like, I already thought he did these things awesomely - but, wow, new levels of awesomeness! Thank you Lord for the lavish blessing you've placed within him and in my life.

And today, I spent enough time outside to give myself an eyeache (from the sun) in Sally's backyard. We've FINALLY had nice enough weather for me to spend nearly all day outside!

"These are for you, Megan."
~God