School, weddings, and incense filled churches
I find myself unable to post lately. Though I am busy, it would seem to be mostly due to the fact that I feel like I have nothing exciting in my life to post about. Life goes on as usual. School, Jake, work, social life, school. So, I will attempt to send my readers and update without boring anyone too much.
First quarter ended well. I pulled off a pretty decent GPA and felt very happy going into Thanksgiving break. I spent break mostly with Jake's family.
Second quarter has been much of the same. It's been pretty rough for me to find a good balance of time, but time management is a common struggle of mine. Christmas break came and went. It was nice to spend time with my family. I also started the "wedding season" with my good friend Brent getting married on Dec 30th. That was a really fun road trip for Jake and I. We saw some sights, spent some quality time together, and he got to meet some of the very important people in my life. The second picture above is Jake and I at Brent's wedding reception in Missouri.
Break was very busy after the holidays ended. We only get two weeks off, and the second week was half filled with clinical. The nursing program ran into some problems with scheduling clinicals at Children's, so my group was told that we had to figure out a different time than the scheduled last 4 weeks of the quarter. So, we were basically a pilot group, and our professor met with us for 8 hours of orientation on Tuesday, and then 10 hours of clinical Wednesday and Thursday before classes started and the Wednesday and Thursday of our first week back. I was a little wary of it at first, but it was probably the best clinical experience I've ever had. 48 hours in two weeks. It was tiring, but in the end it meant fewer write ups and really a lot more opportunity.
To end Christmas break, I was able to stand up in my two very dear friends' wedding. They were married on the 5th of January. The first picture above is me and the happy couple.
School after Christmas break is always difficult to get back into. It's not like semesters where the end of that break is the beginning of a new semester. I came back from break and started week 5, and the following week was midterm time. One thing I will say is, with clinical out of the way, I have a lot of extra time that I want to make sure to be extra careful with. I have papers to write and intern applications to fill out. It's really easy for me to say in my head what I should be doing during my free time, it's another thing to follow through with it.
Oh, and to finish out my "wedding season" I had another wedding on Jan 13th.
Other news: Jake and I celebrated our one year anniversary on Saturday. I can't even believe it. In some respects it seems like just yesterday and in other respects I feel like we've been together forever. He graduates in May, and I'm starting to really think about what direction my life is going to head in the next couple of years. I feel extremely blessed.
The final note I want to make is that Jake and I are on a very interesting "church tour" right now. In an attempt to really figure out what church we want to make our home, our mentor, Dr. Scheibler, has set us up on a journey through 11 weeks with 11 churches. He started us out with the most historic and subsequently most complicated church and is moving us through to the most simple. He's left out both traditional Catholic (Jake's background) and Assembly of God (my background). Our goal is to learn as much as we can about what the Christian denominations have to offer and try to honestly figure out where we would best fit together. Dr. Scheibler has commented about how he feels that if everyone committed to doing something like this, less relationships would have spiritual discourse. I would tend to agree, especially when a couple comes from such completely different sides as Catholic and Charasmatic Pentacostal. So far, we have gone to a Greek Orthodox church and a Melkite (Eastern Rite) Catholic church. Next week we visit a traditional Lutheran church. I would really like to blog my experiences because I have never been exposed to so many different types of worship and spiritual practice before. All I will say about my first two experiences is that they were very interesting. I struggle with connecting personally with Jesus in those church atmospheres. Probably because that is not the emphasis of the mass. I will also comment on how much I dislike incense, icons, and singing without any instruments to guide you.
I will be hoping to stay updated with my church journey. I am very excited to see how much Jake and I grow spiritually through this and how much we learn and understand about each other and God in the end.
posted by Katie @ 8:43 AM
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