Hardest thing of STINT

I am sitting in my room enjoying that it is summertime in Spain. Now, I don't enjoy my allergies that are at times uncontrollable. Each morning it takes me three hours to get them undercontrol. Not cool! HOWEVER, right now, I am sitting enjoying that all the windows in our house are open. There is a breeze coming from the living room through my room, and I can smell the neighbors clean laundry hanging on the line. It's so beautiful!

Also, tonight, Granada is celebrating Corpus, which is a week-long holiday they celebrate 40 days after the resurrection of Christ. They have bullfights, sevillana dancing in the streets, women and children dressed in Flamenco attire, and spanish guitar and singing in the streets. It's glorious and so cultural. I have moments where I think, "if I lived here I would have their accent, and they would accept me as spanish!" I fully understand Hemingway's obsession with this country. I love it, and want to be apart of it so badly!

Bringing me to this next part (start the violin music please) I am struggling! For those of you who don't know or are surprised I am quite a sentimental person. It takes me a while to transition, but when I do, my heart is completely and utterly devoted to that moment, place, people, culture, etc. At this moment, my heart is completely devoted to this place, and in my sentimentality, I am trying to make time stop, so I don't have to leave it in 7 weeks.

The realism came when I began to feel the sting of loneliness here because my world I created this year is changing, and people are leaving such as myself. Also, I realized, I am going home to a friends that I don't really know anymore. For those of you reading, I hope you know that I am saying that I have NO IDEA what's been going on in your life. I don't know you, and I am a very different person than before, and you don't really know me. Right now, my reality is that the people I surround myself with know me, and I have to leave them, which is what I did to all of you.

I find bitterness in my heart as a result of it. I find myself asking, "why do you care anymore? why do you try with people when you are not there they move on?" Now, I moved on too. After a huge fight with God, I surrendered, and I found my love for Spain. I made friends. I made this place a home, and now, I must leave it all over again. To go through the transition again, terrifies me. It was the hardest most testing experience of my faith and attitude of anything I have experienced.

For those of you who have spoken with me recently, I want to apologize. I must say, there is a touch of sadness and bitterness that I can't exactly get a handle on. I started going through the Ecclesiastes sermons of Matt Chandler (Thanks Dustin), but I wholeheartedly understand. That no matter what we do, this world keeps going. We leave the functions of this world unchanged, and I am fighting with all I have to find my hope in Christ.

When I was little I only asked for one thing. I just wanted to be happy, and will say, He has answered that prayer time and time again, but it is in moments like now...moments when my sentimentality gets the best of me that I am sabotaging my own joy. I sabotage it because in the back of my mind, I think, you are leaving what's the point.

This is a hard place to be, and I know you all can't exactly empathize, but mostly, I just wanted to let you know what is the hardest part of stint. Also, why I have been a punk to those of you who have had to deal with me recently. Lastly, so I can look back on this time, and see how God replaces my hope and joy in Him because I know He will. I just have to stay the course, and not let hopelessness and loneliness take away all the good inside of me.