.: rain :.

It rained today for the first time in a while... Welcome to Vancouver!

Last night, we hosted our first community dinner. I had the privledge of preparing the main course... an hour and a half before everyone was ready to eat. So as the food got put back into the oven for another hour, I went into my room and felt myself begin to slide into a cruddy mood. Looking back on it now, 5 PM is kinda early to have dinner... but to have the remaining missing roommates slide in the door an hour after I had notified them to be here (the beauty of a community board), I felt myself grumble at a pretty intense level, just beneath the surface of my smiling face and anticipated words of forgiveness.

The night was an interesting one to say the least, because once again, I was reminded of how I can so easily become an introvert even in a crowd of good friends. Very few of the subjects were ones that I felt like I could offer good imput into, so instead I simply waited on our guests and took in the whole scenario. Yes, I am blessed to have a good amount of friends here at Regent... but so often I feel tempted just to slip into the mood of just focusing on my studies and really only offering myself to two or three people.

Even at the Retreat this past weekend (at Warm Beach), I was feeling some of this. I mean, I seriously have not felt that alone and exposed (as I was during certain parts of the Retreat) since High School. There just were so many people there... and they choose to organize all these events throughout the weekend, and then just head us off into them, assuming that we all already know each other. And I just sat there, thinking and reminding myself that I don't need anybody else... which is a great thing to tell yourself when you feel like no one is coming for you. I needed rescuing, and in a way God used a couple people to do just that. But these past 3 weeks have been a period of extremes where I so quickly fly from feelings of complete adequacy to ponderings of why exactly I am where I am at any given moment.

Sometimes all you can do is thank God that you yourself were rescued from those situations (if in fact your were) by something... anything. But a part of myself certainly says, "Do not let yourself end up in that situation ever again!" And you leave mental notes to yourself in order to remember such scenarios that left you dazed and feeling somewhere between out of control and just simply out of your element!