Year 25 in reflection

Two days until I will have spent 26 years on this earth. I suppose the thing to do is reflect on this past year. I have to say it's been an amazing adventure. It started off with me in summer school after about four years of not taking classes. (Wow, that's a long time!) I was a year into working real estate at a condominium sales project in Fremont. I learned alot working in a business atmosphere, but mostly that I hated sales and business. After swearing off school for four years I decided to go back and do nursing. I quit my job, signed up for anatomy and started working at The Bridges as a server. And the craziest thing happened. I loved school. I had so much fun that summer, spending five days a week five hours a day in class, practice labs on the weekends, and studying for hours and hours during the week. I soaked up every bit of it and became more and more excited about school. After five weeks of intense anatomy, school got out and within days I was off to YL camp. A few days before camp I was told I would be a leader for a bunch of kids from Livermore (whom I had never met). I was a little nervous to be sure, but I went with it. The bus ride up was a little awckward but by the end of the first day at camp I had made some amazing connections with my small group and the other guys in my cabin. That week turned out to be a huge encouragement in my life. Its like part of me had been dead for years, a result of letting life beat me up, but I became fully alive then and there. Something in me switched on and I have never been the same since. That was one of the best summers of my life.

The school year went on and I continued to love it, make new friends, and push on through. An opportunity came up in January to go to Colorado--I was in and it was amazing! That trip set in me an undeniable desire to do a missions trip (I had never done anything like it before). A month or so later I learned about a trip to Hungary, and my life will never be the same because of it (seems like thats a constant theme in my life).

So here I am, two days away from my birthday, two and half weeks away from YL camp, and three and half weeks away from travelling the US by car with three good buddies. I have allowed my life to become more of an adventure and now I'm addicted. I have new dreams and desires and get excited every day about what's to come.

Everyone has those things in their life that makes their heart come alive, and I have begun to find what those things are for me. I used to think it was in physical adventure, pushing myself past boundaries and limits, hanging off cliffs, falling out of the skies; but those things never satisfied. It's when I'm around people that I come alive, it's when I get the opportunity to be who I am in situations I've never been in. The adventure is not what you're doing, its who you're doing it with. And so I get ready to begin another year of life, with no clue of where it's going to take me.