I am safely home for the weekend. Three whole days of family :) and right before another weekend of FOUR whole days with family for Thanksgiving. God is good and wants me to spend time with family. Don't believe me? Check out this email I just found...

This paper was going to be due this upcoming Monday and I planned on trying to finish it today so I wouldn't have to worry about it at home and could fully give myself to my family. (Looming paper due dates have a way of ruining family time :T) As it turned out, I didn't get to write as much today as I hoped (but I did get to do a lot of organizing and prepping for it) so I was planning to spend most of the daytime tomorrow writing it at home while everyone would be at work or school. But now? Now I can just worry about where I'm whisking my little sister off to after school instead :)

I am so thankful.
We learned about grace today. What a practical way of experiencing it.

I started off my day to an email that uplifted my spirits--

I'll understand.
I feel like these are the words that I have needed to hear so much lately, and this email touched me at a place in my heart only God knows of. I feel so understood. And not only by my friend, but--to think!--by the God of the universe who promises me that and tells me over and over again in His Word that He knows me, loves me, understands me. God has been showing me this about Him so much in the past few days at a time that I need to hear it the most. Can you even fathom it?

I was sitting, feeling so alone a couple of nights ago and thought to myself how funny it was that people really want others to know they are sad without having to tell them. How much we want others to discover our sadness themselves, point it out and be there for us without us asking. As I was sitting on the floor thinking that to myself I thought about how I might call a friend up and make sure I still sounded like I was crying so she'd know just how sad I was feeling since she couldn't see me face-to-face. Then I thought about those dramatic scenes in movies when a character is crying by himself/herself and how because we are the audience we are able to see into the private cries of the character and we can feel for the character, without the character ever having to tell us that he/she is sad. I started to get a little jealous. So I thought about how I wish there was a camera that was, at aerial view, somehow letting someone know how I was feeling. Then I realized how silly that was because it dawned on me that I never have to yearn to feel understood because there is Someone that, at all times, in all situations, who always sees me. Someone who feels me, who knows me, who fully understands me at all times. Someone who I can never hide from.

It's wonderful to feel understood. The thought made me sing. So I sang, and as I did, the tears went away.