One.

At this time last year I was on African soil, getting settled in at the Village.

After two days of travel, I had been picked up at the airport by Marj and George. I had a chance to get settled in my room and take a shower before Marj offered me lunch and a walk around the HUB to see where everything is. This may or may not have been an incentive to keep me awake and my jet lag at bay ;-)

I remember being on sensory overload, going through the motions of putting my things away in my new home. I remember relishing the water in the shower after two+ days of travel. I remember my prayers. My fervent, urgent prayers. Prayers that included my immediate feelings of culture shock to wrestling with God's direction for my life. A year later, my life is essentially exactly the same. (Minus the temperature difference!)

Today, despite being in my home, I feel I am living life as a visitor. An outsider.

Today I am cleaning out my closet. Technically it's mostly cleaned out and I just have to wash and box things for charity. I went shopping last night. It was the first time in a long time. I don't relish the idea of spending money on clothes, but I had clothes I wasn't wearing that I just didn't want to part with. I'm not sure why honestly, it was various sentimental reasons I suppose. When I brought home my haul (total of 7 items) it was easy to let go of the pile I had discarded. Out with the old, the unworn and unusued, and in with the new. I'm also letting go of another pile of books. I'm a visitor in my former life. I'm not the same, and my life isn't either. Holding on to things for the next ten years won't make a difference. So I am packing up my old life to make room for my new life. New responsibilities at work, a new church family, a new women's Bible study (yes!!!), and a new heart.

These last two months have been tough. They have been painful and they have been worth it! If our lives are as lumps of clay on a potter's wheel where God is the potter, I am really being reshaped! I took ceramics in college. I was horrible at it, especially the potter's wheel unit! I remember the concepts, the intentions and the tools. If I'm a clay pot, I'm not really sure what I looked like two months ago... but I know what the process felt like. For one month, mid-November thru mid-December, it felt like He used a wire clay cutter to cut the excess away. It was painful, the act of letting go. Then He began to reshape what was left with a wooden rib. He really applied pressure so that I could be formed into something stronger. Something I wasn't sure I could be. This week He is cleaning out the inside. He is taking the rib up and down the inside of the vessel, of my heart, to get rid of anything that shouldn't be there and reshape what is left.

So today I let go of things that shouldn't still be here, and make room for what could be here. Remembering lessons that I've learned in Africa and that I am continuing to learn here at home.