the first post

yikes! i actually DO have a blog now...i have wanted to have one for quite some time, but came across some bumps along the road, the primary one being: what do i TITLE this thing?? and i will admit that i know MANY blogs that have much better names than mine...mine is a little cheesy/strange, but i think that the word "transient" really identifies with this time period in my life.

tran·sient   [tran-shuhnt, -zhuhnt, -zee-uhnt]
–adjective
1. not lasting, enduring, or permanent; transitory.
2. lasting only a short time; existing briefly; temporary: transient authority.
3. staying only a short time: the transient guests at a hotel.

yes, every period of our lives is "not lasting" but i feel that our years in college are particularly like this and create a special dependency on Christ because we have so many unknowns. i have a home to return to during vacation times, but i don't always feel like i belong there since i have spent so much time away...and when i am back at school i am often homesick for the familiarity of life in my home state.

but yet this time is also exciting because i don't know what the next day holds, where i am going to live this summer, or if i am going to grad school after graduation, or getting a job. i don't know if i belong on the east coast or the west or the mid west for that matter. i don't know a lot of things, but i do know that God wants me to be content as i sit and dream of my future, move different places, chat to random strangers on the airplane as i make that joyous ride out west/east periodically, enjoy home-cooked meals with my mom, or apartment-cooked meals with my friends.

I was blog-reading one day and found this quote from one of my favorite authors:

"And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?”

— Donald Miller (Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road)

i am in a season of goodbyes and hellos, lots of thinking and pondering, as well as lots of laughing and learning. one of the biggest parts of this learning is better understanding how to communicate my learnings to others...so i want to do some of that through writing. i often come away from classes and conversations so full of new things that i want to share with people, but the words don't come or the wrong ones do. i hope that i can write to better express what God is teaching me and how he is using so many different elements of his creation to show me more of himself.

and as i think about transience, i don't want to forget that this life on earth is not permanent. no home will ever feel like true home until i am in Heaven and nothing will ever satisfy me completely until i stand there. so while i travel, learn, grow, and dream, i hope that i will remember that i am like an israelite, waiting for the promised land, but guided patiently by a loving father.