overview...[blessings]

I'm back home in Forster. I have been for at least the last 2 weeks and I'll be here for at least another week.

Dad is on long service leave, so mum and dad packed up the car and have hit the road and they're travelling to a few of the nooks and crannies around Australia. Thus why I have been called back home, as I explain it, I'm "babysitting my little sister" To which most people who know me will say, "isn't your sister your twin, meaning she's the same age as you?"
The answer to that is indeed Yes.
Mum and dad were worried that Kate would get lonely, and I had no hesitation in coming to visit my best buddy for 3 weeks.

This morning as I stirred, glancing briefly out my bedroom window and guessing the time to be something around 8am, smiling softly at the thought I had beaten my alarm. However it seems the overcast weather deceived me quite effectively as the time was actually 12:30 and somehow I had slept through the alarm without even stirring. Being deceived so early into the day is not the greatest of starts, I would have been more annoyed had I actually had a reason for getting up before the alarm.
Instead I just lay there and it was in that moment that I was overcome with a sadness. Like a blanket it came over me.
I miss all the blessings of Armidale, of my time in Armidale. My friends.
I had left Armidale 2 weeks ago only moments after hugging Laura tightly and swearing to stay in touch. Loz was heading back to her hometown of Orange for the next 3 months and it was very posible that I would have moved away from Armi by the time she returned for her final year of Uni.

I realise that I'm at a big place right now. The decisions that I will be making over the next few months and the decisions I have made over the last few months are determining the course of my life...at least the next stage of my life.

As I look at permanent teaching positions, I have resided myself to the fact that I will probably have to accept something further west into the state, and I am quite confident and comfortable about that. I think, if I have learnt nothing else over the last 4 years it is this;

God is a truely gracious and merciful God. He always has the best for me and if I fight him less and trust him more, in time, I will see that what he offers me is what I really need and want.

I look back on the last 4 years and I can see Gods blessings all over it.When I think about how I would worry, how often during that first year I felt so alone and so hopeless. The time spent in prayer pleading with him to grant me real and authentic friendships...to grant me peace in Armi

Anyone who knows me well knows that for probably the first year of Armidale I couldn't wait to get out. And now as I sit at the tail end of my adventure I will be pained to leave.

I know that Armidale was exactly where God wanted me to be - in faithfulness I followed him there trusting that everything he promised me would come into being. Believe me when I say these things I am not trying to make myself into some sort of loyal saint. Rather to the contrary, I followed God there and in my heart of hearts I trusted him, but during the whole journey I often lacked faith and I often lacked the stamina...praise God I did make it, praise God that he gave me the strength I needed when I needed it. When what he probably really wanted to do was give me a good clonk over the head [I'm sure there were times when he did, as all good fathers should] Heck knows that for at least half the journey I was like that whingey kid in the back seat whining with "Are we there yet?!!!"

Whining didn't get me there any quicker and I can see that now. But sometimes it's easier to pretend to be a victim than to stand tall, be confident and know it's all going to work out beautifully, sometimes as faithful as God has always been, we need him to prove himself once more.

I can still remember what it was that proved to me once and for all that God was with me all the way. It was the break-up with Aaron. I can remember lying on my bedroom floor in flat 28 crying so hard that it hurt, crying untill tears ran dry and all that was left were dry, breaking sobs.
I can remember that as I lay there and just cried I knew, in the midst of all of that despair...God was there, I knew that he lay there beside me, he didn't speak he just cried with me.
When i awoke the next morning and pulled myslef off the floor where I had fallen asleep I was filled with a confidence I cannot describe, a confidence that God was with me for the long haul. Where people had fallen short and let me down, he never did and he never has.

It was as though the plug was pulled, and with that realisation came a clear flow of blessing.

I think that in order for me to really appreciate the things he had for me, I needed to realise that the greatest of all was simply his presence. I still earnestly believe that.

So as I prepare myself to possibly leave armidale at the dawn of the new year I want to say thankyou. I want to pray blessing and prosperity and joy and love in Jesus name over all those friends in Armidale who were nothing less than pure and holy and righteous blessings of God into my life. Who spoke love and life into me. Who invested and were invested in. Leaving armidale is not the end...far from it dear friend. You are my brothers and sisters, the bond we have runs thicker than blood and I will spend the rest of my life investing in what you are, what you do and who you become.

Thankyou dear dear, Laura, Felicity [fless], Rhen, tess, Wae-jae, Timmy, Timmi, Alex, Dan, Brit, Suzie, Sam, Bron, Siovahn, kerry, Christine, Dave, Nick, Nicole, Bec, Bree.

Also I want to thank you who I include in my Armidale bunch, because while you may not have physically been in Armidale you were also what helped me through, you too spoke the truths and blessings into my life and I want to include you in all the thankyou's and blessings - Paul, Bec, Mon, Kate [and my whole family], Belle, Rea, Jess.W.

But the biggest thankyou of All goes to the big dude, J.C.

You have given me incredible friends, and a beautiful and amazing fiance Tim
I love you, I trust you...even though sometimes it's hard when I face the future. I believe your promises and place all my hope in you...

Matthew 6:25
25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
28"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.