Catching up

It has been such a long time since I've blogged - especially on this particular one! It seems odd to me that although writing in my journals has never ceased, writing on an electronic version has never seemed to stick with me. As much as I love change, I have started and neglected numerous blogs over the last few years. So, as a way to catch any one up on my life over the last few years who really wants to know, please visit these other sites. And from now on I will try to stick to this one.

The blog from a summer in Jamaica

An old blog that was connected to the blog from that summer in Jamaica

A blog that got me through a difficult portion of Junior/Senior year and moving back to Virginia

The summer before Senior year (but it shares some with the previous link)

The blog I would have kept up if I hadn't lost all my sign-in information with no way to retrieve it.

The blog I started to keep in touch with people on xanga.

Well there you have it. A smattering of my ups and downs and in betweens over the last 2-3 years.

Returning Reflections

It has been three months, but I'm back. It's a strange feeling, really. I'd like to think that I've changed; that the lessons I learned this summer have actually made me a different person. But I know how easily I am swayed by the winds of America and materialism and selfishness. It would seem, though, that if such lessons really do slip through my fingers and my old habits and mindsets creek back up over my heart, then perhaps I never really was changed.

God worked on me a lot this summer, and I am very glad He did. With as many bad thing that happened this summer, one very undeniable point is that it put me in the exact place, situation, and attitude for God to really grab a hold of me. Some of what I learned is simply too much to write about, and the rest is simply too painful.

But now that I'm back, I embark upon the academic year that will be, by far, the most challenging one of my life. Not because of class work, but because of everything else. But if anything could have prepared me for the heartache that lies ahead by pouring a concrete foundation in my love relationship with God, it was this summer.

He is going to teach me a lot this year; I can see it coming already. I just want to stay in a place where I can listen to Him. I am changed, and I like being different. I just hope its not too hard to convince everyone else of that, and to keep those American winds at bay.

Until I return....

I have left this blog sorely unattended - but if you would like to keep up with my travels over the summer, please see my summer blog at www.underthetinroof.blogspot.com - I have been here 5 weeks already, and have about that much to go, but I'll be posting on there until I get back to America at which time I will pick this one back up. Thanks!

Mom made me do it

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? A friend of my parents - her name was actually Betsy too, and not just a nickname for Elizabeth.
2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? the last time I watched the Lion King
3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? yes I do.
4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH probably Elderberry's at the moment
5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS? Nope
6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Probably. I'm pretty entertaining.
7. DO YOU USE SARCASM? Pretty much all the time.
8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yeah

A Beautiful Mindset

I dressed up on Friday. I had a couple of events to go to in succession and I happened to have the perfect dress for the occasion. People who see me everyday stopped and told me how beautiful I looked. And then when I left town and saw people who hadn't seen me in 8 months or more, they also all said how beautiful I looked.

I liked it. What girl wouldn't?


But then I saw him. And through the course of our conversation (during which he commented on how nice I looked) he reminded me that true beauty lies on the inside. And that he recognizes that I'm just as beautiful on the inside as I am on the outside - possibly more so.

It's nice that people think I'm pretty. But more than having a beautiful face, I also want to have a beautiful mind and especially a beautiful heart. And that's what I want people to be looking for.

From Coast to Costa Rica

For six years my life has been 112% about Jamaica. From the minute I stepped onto the Island in February of 2002, it was as if God had hung up a huge banner that said "Welcome Home!" I was sure of my calling as a missionary to the deaf kids of Jamaica, and that assurance hasn't changed. But in March, it was tweaked a little.

I went on a one-week trip to Kingston for Spring Break to work at the school with a group from two combined churches. God used that particular trip to start stretching my heart. He made me realize how comfortable I've become in Jamaica and with that ministry - to the point that I've had blinders on regarding any other ministry opportunities and any other countries.

He brought to mind the couple that was almost entirely the reason my love for these kids, this ministry, and this country was even sparked. They were so consumed with their love for all of that and their work and everything, and I kind of caught that bug for them. But they were only called to Jamaica for a time. Now they have an equally thriving ministry in a completely different country with a brand-new ministry.
And I think God was saying "Get ready. You won't be in Jamaica forever. And you need to be okay with that."

So we went through this period of me adjusting to that idea, but since the trip it hadn't really come up again.
Until today.

I'm visiting a new church these days and today the speaker was a missionary to Costa Rica. He and I and another friend I have at the church were talking for a while after the service and I was telling them about my work in Jamaica and about how long I'm planning on working there after graduation.
The missionary pauses and then presents me with a proposition.

There is only on missionary (at least with this particular group) that works with the deaf in all of Central America. They are in desperate need for Deaf missionaries, and missionaries that sign, to go to that part of the world for short-term or long-term trips.

I was so excited while I was talking to them - I was practically shaking. It was like God started planting that seed in my mind and heart for this exact moment when it was my second Sunday at a brand-new church, meeting a missionary who was in town for one week, talking about a practically perfect Betsy-shaped opportunity.

I couldn't be more excited about what my future might bring.

But I'm still even more excited about being home on the Island for one entire absolutely wonderful summer.

Graduation thoughts

Went to the boyfriend's graduation today. Amidst the smiling at him cuz he looks funny in a cap, and tearing up cuz this means he's made it and all done and about to hit the complete opposite coast for grad school, and laughing at all the other kids' funny names, I did manage to actually pay attention to a few of the things the speaker(s) said.
There was one thing in particular - although I've forgotten both who originally said it and who said it today - that sparked me thinking about how it applied to my own life.

Which, come to think of it, is usually the reason someone says something - especially when they quote someone else. Someone famous. Someone dead.

Anyways, this is the gist of it:
Many of the shadows of our lives are cast by us standing in our own sunshine.

Isn't that interesting? And surprisingly true.

The intensity of the shadow over my life when I lost my hearing was because I was basking in the sunshine of my popularity and my musical talent and the direction my life was going. Any hearing loss would have been a shadow anyway, but the fact that I was so caught up in the big shot I thought I was and the even bigger shot I thought I was going to be that the sudden stop and U-turn I took that year or two threw me for a major loop.

And of course it made me think of what I would consider the biggest shadow over my life right now. And that is the fact that I'm at this school instead of the new one. And why is that really a shadow? Why do I hate it here so much? And it is because I was standing too tall in the sunshine of my life at LR.

This whole "many of the shadows of our lives are cast by us standing in our own sunshine" thing seems terribly obvious, and yet it never really occurred to me in quite that way. But now that I'm thinking about it, and applying it to various specific instances in my own life (both past and present) I think I'm learning to make those shadows become sunshine themselves. Or at the very least, I'm learning to sit down in my own sunshine so that the shadow cast isn't quite so big.