Hey everyone, for those of you who have been waiting in anticipation to see some pictures of my house, here they are. These are two pics from my living room and dining room. I don't have any of the roomies and me yet, but soon. :) Well, I'm writing again...and for those of you who do not know, I'll catch you up on a little more of what I've been doing since the spring. I felt God's leading for me to stay in Beaver Falls, and He also provided a job for me in the Drug and Alcohol field. Throughout the spring, God had been working in me to gain a passion for people coming from these perspectives. I have now been four months into my job and learned so much that I can't even begin to convey all of it right now. I am an evening counselor at Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Aliquippa Pennsylvania. My job is hard to explain: every day is so very different, but the main part of my job is to lead therapy groups and have one-on-one counseling with patients. (The patients come in for 2-3 week rehab, sleeping and eating there while receiving treatment all day.) I still live in Beaver Falls with four wonderful roomates. I knew them all from college. Two of them graduated with me, and the other one graduated 2 years ago. Since I work the evening shift, I am noticing what an incredible blessing it is that I live in a college town. I am able to be with people, have an accountability, and an outlet when I desperately need it.

Anyways, that's the gist of what's going on with the surface level. When people ask me if I like my job, my usual response is "most days." It's true, I do love my job most days, but let me tell ya, the bad days can be such that I have a hard time remembering the good days. In fact, I never knew just how hard it would be to have responsibility over people. In short, the struggle I have is that I wonder if I have a good balance of showing justice to these people as well as showing mercy. That's what God is so good at, and every day I pray for the wisdom to have that same balance (Micah 6:8 and Matthew 10:16 are my constant prayers). I know I will never be perfect, but I've never noticed my imperfection of that balance so blatantly as I do now.

Sometimes, like last night, something happens that is really hard to handle with a patient or sometimes even staff. I come back wondering and praying that I handled it the right way. However, it's like the feeling I have after taking a test at school, someone asks me how I did, and I respond by saying that I honestly could have failed or I could have aced it. I have no idea. That's exactly how I feel on these days at work. Sometimes I wonder if I'm completely off the mark of following how God wants me to balance justice and mercy with these patients, or if I am right on track. Are the struggles that I am having part of the consequences from my mistakes or are they just because a follower of Christ must go through struggles in order to learn and grow?

When I have these days, and it's not all the time, don't worry...but when I have them, I remember that in Uganda I hated it many times while I was there...going through culture shock and adjusting and re-adjusting, etc. When I came back from Uganda, people asked me the cliche question, "how was Uganda?" I responded honestly that it was really hard, but I don't regret it. I don't at all. I learned a lot, grew a lot, questioned alot, was challenged a lot. I wonder, is this job the same thing for me right now? When I say I don't love my job every day, people begin to question on my behalf whether I should be there, but maybe it's a culture adjustment thing as well, and God is molding me through it all. Perhaps I need to go through the good and the really difficult in order to really grow and learn.

Anyways, thank you all for listening to my rambling for now. I hope you enjoy my pictures and thoughts about life. :)