Exodus 34:6-7

"Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed,

'The Lord,

the Lord God,

compassionate
and gracious,

slow to anger,

and abounding in
lovingkindness
and truth;

who keeps lovingkindness
for thousands,

who forgives iniquity,
transgression
and sin;

yet He will
by no means
leave the guilty
unpunished,

visiting the iniquity of fathers
on the children
and on the grandchildren
to the third
and fourth generations.'"

Friends

Remember when we were little, and all it took to make friends was to walk up to someone and say, "Do you want to be my friend?"

And soon you were sitting together in the dirt digging holes, completely satisfied and comfortable with each other as if you had known each other your whole lives.

More Update!

Two posts in two days!  Incredible!!

You may be wondering what's been going on in my world, aside from reading.

Well I already wrote about coming back from Spain.

Since then, a month has passed.  The first almost weekish was spent with my family, followed by a near week with friends in Virginia.  The day before going to Virginia my family moved me to Ft. Worth, where the seminary is.  When I got back to DFW, my new car was waiting for me in "The Parking Spot."  If you've ever been to DFW airport, you've seen those goofy polka dot vans.  I got to ride one of those.  :)

Then, classes started.

I'll be honest - that first week was rough.  

Not because of the classes in themselves, but the rather, the whole process of moving overseas (from a place I LOVED), starting over in a new city, returning to way of life that I thought I had left behind, driving again (terrifying!), missing my friends back in Spain...the list goes on.

Honestly, I just wanted to curl up into a ball and cry.  

I'm pretty sure I did a few times.

But since that first week of class, things have improved greatly.  A guy in Spain put me in touch with a girl he knew that would also be starting here this Fall, and we just happened to bump into each other the first week.  We've been hanging out ever since.

For my birthday, instead of sitting at Starbucks by myself with no friends (what would have happened), she decided we had to do something.  So she and I and two other girls and one guy went to Macaroni Grill and bowling.  Let me tell you, that was the best date of his life.  Four girls, one guy - can it get much better?  We had a blast.  The pasta was delicious, the bowling was a blast (I bowled 136 in the first game!), and we loved watching the guys next to us bowl.  They were awesome.

Then on Friday I went home to my sister's house for my birthday dinner with the family.  She told me that the kids wanted to surprise me, so I walked back to my room, opened the door, turned on the light and.....SURPRISE!!  The kids jumped out from behind the bed which MY MOM was sitting on.

My mom.  

The one living in Asia.

The one who told me she'd be home the next week.

I stared at her.  Turned to my sister.  Stared at her again.  Finally she stood up, we hugged, and the sobbing began.  It's been a rough month, and no matter how old a girl gets, there's nothing like crying it all away in your momma's arms.

I'm sure my brother-in-law will be posting a terribly embarrassing video soon.  I'll be sure link you to it.

And now...back to reading.

My Life Lately

Is reading.

Reading.

All the time.

And more reading.

Why didn't anybody warn me about this??

Why didn't somebody tell me, "Laura, going to seminary is NOT like undergrad."

I've never had more reading in my life!

Completing the reading assignments for my Old Testament class alone seems next to impossible, and I've got three and a half classes on top of that!

Greek is supposed to be one of the more challenging classes, but so far I'm having an easier time keeping up with my Greek work than any other class, including the half-class.

Not that being a math major was easy, but at least the answers were clear. You either understood or didn't understand. And if you didn't understand, you could usually make some stuff up, quote a few theorems, mention Pythagoras or Descartes and still get some credit.

So while I thoroughly enjoy reading about Marcion (early church heretic), the Abrahamic Covenant, allegorical vs. literal interpretation, and first and second declensions of Greek nouns, when is a girl supposed to eat? sleep? flirt? (just kidding! boys scare me).

It is only by the grace of God that I'm going to survive this semester with any amount of sanity intact. And while I spend plenty of time reading the Bible for my Old Testament and my Hermeneutics classes, I'm even having difficult finding time to sit down and soak it in as anything more than a textbook. You can certainly pray for me in that.

However I must say, I LOVE that we're studying the Pentateuch right now in OT. The Lord led me to study Exodus last Spring and it was life changing. Literally. Through it He told me to come back to Texas. So here I am, wandering in the wilderness of Ft. Worth, hanging on to His promises for dear life. And as I read and study Exodus as a textbook, I can't help but remember the sweet (but challenging! let's not over-romanticize it!) times I had in Spain, reading Éxodo (I studied it in Spanish) at my dining room table each morning, looking out the window towards Atocha train station, knowing that the time was coming to say "see you later", but never "goodbye."

España, te quiero.