Mainz (not yours) Germany

Whew!  The airplane ride is over, I found my hostel with a lot of help from friendly locals (it helps to learn to pronounce the desired location correctly) and I have successfully stayed awake until 8 p.m. German time.
It is quite nice traveling alone, I had almost forgotten the feeling as it has been a couple of years since I've done it.  I love how approachable being alone makes you to other people and how it forces me to ask for help and I meet new people as a result.  It took much head nodding from a friendly older man, frantic conferencing between two motherly older women, one kind college student, a bakery worker and a man on a bike to get me from the Frankfurt airport to the train station to the Mainz Romisches Theater stop and then my hostel (basically a whole village), but I gained a friend in the process and I think Soraya (the college student) and I are going to spend the day together tomorrow.

I have been pondering the idea of  conversations with strangers lately, and more specifically I have been considering how people will reveal more intimate information with those that they think they will never meet again, but have a hard time sharing equally personal information with those close to them.  Consider Charlotte for instance who was on my long flight last night; she never knew my name but she told me what it was like to lose her daughter to a brain tumor when she was only eight.  Charlotte described in detail her daughter's character, the funeral, and her own health struggles up to the present without bothering with small talk or even with asking me questions; she needed to tell her story.  So why is it comforting to have a stranger take an intimate but small piece of your story with them?  Is it because we are all hungry to be truly known by another, but we rarely have the courage to let anyone in to the deeper waters within, therefore it is less threatening to open up to someone we will never have to face again? There are probably a myriad of reasons as to why these conversations occur, and I think I will have plenty of time and opportunity to consider this further -- but for now I am content with the thought of sleep and the chance that I will get the room to myself tonight : )

It Begins (Actually, technically... it has begun)

On the Friday of my last day at work it did not really feel like I wouldn't be coming back to Target on Monday and so I figured I should save some room in my schedule on Saturday to make sure I processed the transition.  This was a good idea since I had a lot of mixed emotions when I woke up in the morning, however after a few hours talking to God about it and a long stop in Psalm 84 I felt like I was ready to move into this new cadence of life.  I am definitely going to miss seeing my friends from Target  everyday, yet I am excited for the opportunity to meet even more people and to hear their stories. So far no day of this sabbatical time has been the same, there has been a flurry of getting things sorted and packed and moved and seeing good friends and praying and acknowledgment of how big a role that joy plays in breaking up fields of sorrow or confusion.  Joyfulness is a theme I have been camped on for a few weeks as Dave Andros presented on it during a prayer team training session at my church (New Hope Church) and it has rung very true with me that I do need to look for and dwell on joy producing moments/people and things so that when adversity comes I am quickly reminded why the joy of the Lord is my strength.