Goodbye College Station -

Well, it's official. I've said goodbye to my home for the last 4 years. Praise the Lord for all He has done! College Station was God's idea, not mine, and of course it was just what I needed. Thank you Lord that I am not the same person I was 4 years ago. Although leaving makes me sad, everything that I am sad to leave is something to praise the Lord for blessing me with for a time. I am asking the Lord to keep me thankful and expectant, not holding onto what is behind, but striving for what is ahead. The one fun part of leaving is all the people who bless you and make you feel special and loved and know that you will be missed. Thanks friends! I will be at home with my family for a little over a week before we head to Colorado - again, what a blessing!

Adapted from CS Lewis's "Perelandra"
One goes into the forest to pick food, and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one’s mind. Then, it may be that one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy is expected and another is given. The very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you – you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good. You could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other.
It is I myself who turn from the good expected to the good given. Out of my own heart I do it. One can conceive of a heart that did not; which clung to the good it had first thought of and turned the good that was given it into no good. The good things God sends do not draw me into them as the waves lift the seaweed – it is I who plunge into them with my own legs and arms, as when we go swimming. Will it ever be too hard to turn my heart from the thing I wanted to the thing God sends? The wave I plunge into may be very swift and great. I may need all my force to swim into it. He might send me a good like that – or like a wave so swift that all my force was too little?
It often happens that way in swimming – is that not part of the delight?