Well I am now waiting in Heathrow to head home. The past two weeks have been really good. They have given me the opportunity to think about what God would have me do with my life. This experience was significantly different than my trip to Germany. Germany was certainly a lot more fun, however this trip was quite rewarding in other ways. I had the opportunity to hear lectures by experts in their fields and I realized that I am not as smart as I thought I was. During the first few days, I was sad and frustrated. I was sad because I felt like none of the people liked me. I drew this from a conversation with a girl I had on the first day. She was German and I tried to speak to her in German. It was one of the most challenging conversations I had ever had. I don't think i made a very good impression. It was obvious from her face. To make matters worse, there was a guy she talked to later and she clearly seemed to enjoy talking to him more. This is a fundamentally different experience from what I experienced in Germany. In many ways, that experience shaped a lot of how I felt the first four days. Beyond that, all anyone wanted to talk about was what project they were working on and their schools and professors and the like. I just wanted to make friends so i wouldn't feel so lonely anymore. I woke up early one morning and began to wonder if my plans were really what God wanted me to do. I began yelling at him in my head: "Do you even want me to be a professor? Why are you making me look so dumb and weak in front of all these people?" In that moment, I really felt God speak to me. I don't often have those moments, but this one felt pretty clear: God seemed to be saying "You need to be humbled." That has been a recurring theme these past two weeks. Time after time I lost theological and even historical arguments and my loneliness persisted.
I spent a good amount of this trip yelling at God, and not really feeling his presence that much. Despite this, the trip was fantastic. I ended up making some good friends on the trip, and ultimately, I am somewhat sad to go. I am not sitting in the terminal openly weeping in the terminal like I was when I came home from Germany, but I will miss Oxford. That said, I am very happy to go home. Gloucester is my home and nowhere else that In have ever been feels more like home. When I am not there, I am unsettled, though only slightly. I miss sitting on the cannons at Stage Fort Park and looking into the harbor. I miss my couch, my bed, my friends and family. I miss my church and the youth group. Oxford is not home. It is beautiful, but it is not home. I think that is how a Christian ought to feel about the world. This world is not our home, it is a foreign country, one which we are called to witness to and to be embassadors. I am still trying to understand that as I feel so connected to my home. It is a struggle for me to call somewhere home that I have never been. I am still working on that. At any rate, I don't know if I will be a professor or not anymore, but I have been accepted into one masters program, now to find out what I will do from here. God will lead me, and he will lead you as well if you make yourself open to him.
"O my God, in you I trust; let me not be put to shame; let not my enemies exult over me. Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame"-Ps. 25:2-3
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