holy buckets

i graduate with a masters degree on friday. holy buckets...

i still don't have a job, and thats fine. patience, patience, patience... but the hard thing about all of this is columbia.

see, i was an undergraduate at Mizzou and had great friends and great experiences here. then I left and went to canada after graduation for awhile and thought I missed columbia so much, the not-too-small-town feel, the MKT, downtown's fun little shops and restaurants, it's subtle sort of charming appeal. I've even often said that if columbia were at the foot of a mountain I would stay here forever. but when I came back for grad school columbia was different and lonely, and new again and it was hard to be back and not recognize what I had come to love about it. i realize now that that was because all of the things I had come to love about columbia had moved away, and that it wasn't columbia so much that i loved, but the people that were here with me.

and over the last two years i've met some really phenomenal people and rediscovered my love for columbia, a new and different love, of MU Baseball at Taylor Stadium, addison's sweet potato chips, movies at the new ragtag. But again, it hasn't been the chips and games, but the conversations that swirled around them, the time i got spend with people that I enjoy.

and at the end of the week they are all setting out to begin the next part of what life has in store for them. I have a feeling that I am about get lost all over again in a city where i've lived for 6 years.

so, on friday, I will graduate with my masters degree...

I have no idea what the next part of my life holds, but I did get some great advice from a good friend of mine. and i need to remember it more often:

"friendship (with God) means being so intimately in touch with God that you never even need to ask Him to show you His will. above everything else in life seek intimacy with your Maker first. sometimes we get so caught up in His plans for our life we forget about Him. press into Him, not for an answer or an outcome but because He is your first love and cares more about you than where you are going."

such great advice. Lord open the eyes of my heart to see You and know You more.