what's next??

So its been a while since I've written. I actually forgot that I even had a blog until like yesterday. Anyways, I'm still in Charlotte. Unfortunately my internship has now ended and I am now living in the adult world and unemployed at the moment. I'm going to starting working with Therapeutic Services with a boy who has CHARGE Syndrome. He is considered to be blind and deaf, has developmental delay, is nonverbal and needs a little assistance with walking because his equilibrium is off. I am really excited about starting to work with him and get to know him, but I'm also nervous too...I hope he likes me. He seems like a really sweet boy, mom sure is! I am also interviewing on the phone tomorrow with Levine Children's Hospital here in Charlotte. It's the other Children's hospital we have here. It's only PRN but hey...it's something and will at least get my foot in the door. Could turn in to part time, then full time and who knows where I'll go from there :) I'm praying that it goes well. I can't sit at home any longer and not do anything. The last thing I want to do with a college degree is work in a daycare, but I will if I have to. I just worked so hard in school, completed an 800+ hour internship and graduated with honors and now I'm lost...my whole life I've always known what was coming next, I've never finished something and not known that something better and more exciting was right around the corner and now it scares me that I have no idea. I trust God with everything and I know that He has a plan for my life and that I need to just sit back and let him have complete control over where my life goes. I eventually will and everyday I pray that He takes my life and lets me know what's going to happen...something tells me I'm praying the wrong thing, but I know that he understands and will do things in His own time. I'm excited about what's next I just don't know what it is and for right now that's ok. So I just ask for prayer that I be given the answers from God as to what I will be doing...I just need to sit down and be still and know that He is God and my life is in His hands not mine!! Thanks :)

Learning to trust God

I can't believe that it is almost October. I should be getting excited about coming home for the first time all semester and going to the beach for fall break....I'm not, because I'm already here. Although, I am going to the beach and super excited, I'll just be leaving with my mom and sister instead of driving myself and meeting everyone. Anyways, it's hard to believe I'm in week 9 of my internship. After this week I only have 10weeks left in this and I'm done!!! Wow that is super hard to believe. It has been great so far. I've been in the OR and in the ED. Now I'm in the NICU. Life still hasn't gotten that much easier here in the QC. I mean I'm learning to accept that this is the way things are going to be and that I have to just go with it. I have my days though where I'm super happy and excited to be here and hanging out with people and have my family close by....then like a random summer shower I'm crying because I miss Greenville and all my friends. It's crazy, it's like a rollercoaster that I'm ready to get off of. I still don't feel like I'm ready to really venture out on my own. I still find myself wondering why I'm here, where I'm supposed to be going to church, who my friends are here, etc. Talking to my sister the other night just made me realize that what I'm going through is normal, that it's a hard adjustment moving back to a place where you've got no one. All though I do have people here. My whole family is here, my best friend is here, my twins here, another friend from high school is here...but I still don't know why I still feel so lonely most of the time. On anther note, I'm learning how to pray audacious prayers. Actually I'm trying to learn to listen and to obey God. I'm not the best when it comes to completely trusting or listening. Sometimes I just really don't know how to take the next step...whether it be in my life or in my faith. Sometimes I just feel stuck in this same place, not knowing whether to go forward, backwards, left or right. So I'm praying, praying God show me where to go, how to get there, and how to continue in my faith without going 3 steps back! So by God's grace I will get there. Until then I will continue in my walk with God and try to get more in to the word.

Real World, Real Life...

I have started my internship. Just finished up week 1 and tomorrow I start week 2. I can't belive that I have already started. 19 more weeks to go!! It went fairly well this week. I was pretty nervous going in to it and I think that I may be more nervous in the coming weeks because soon I will be preparing patients and their families! I am in the OR right now for these first 4 weeks and then I am going to the ED (Emergency Department) then I think Blume Clinic (hematology/oncology) then NICU then PEDS! :) I am so excited to be able to do this internship. Everyone I have met so far have been so nice. This past Friday, Me, Greg, and Diane got to go on the community cruiser that Presbyterian has. It is an 18 wheeler truck that is made like a doctors office inside. Diane and I got to be the ones to distract the children while they were getting shots, and Greg helped us when we were lost. He is one of the child life specialist at Presbyterian. It was a lot of fun and a day outside of the hospital. It can get a little crazy down in the basement and you can feel a little blah when you don't see outdoors all day long. I have had to get up around 5:00 and be at the hospital by 6:30am, but the good thing is for this rotation I am done at 2:00 each day. I'm really glad to have started...but, I still really miss greenville and my roommates and the atmosphere that I used to live in there. It's still really weird here and I have yet to find my place...but I will eventually I am sure. Today Joyce came to visit me and it was great, but it left me feeling sad inside...hoping this whole living here in Charlotte with my sister thing gets easier one day...I know eventually it will. For now, I'm just living it up at the hospital each day and loving every minute of it :)

Missing it all...

So I've officially moved back to Charlotte. Wow...this seems so surreal and I still think at times that I'm only here for the weekend and that I'll soon be packing up and going back to Greenville. Then reality hits me like a ton of bricks and I realize that my life there is over and it's time to start a new one here. I've moved in with my sister and her other roommate and don't get me wrong, I love it! I have wanted nothing less then to move back to Charlotte, but now that I'm here for good I want nothing more then to be back in Greenville with my girls! I know that we've all dispersed but that doesn't seem to make it any easier. I see my sister and her roommate and it only reminds me of the times my roommates and I had. Dinners, life talks, car rides, singing, etc. I know that this will get easier but right now it's super hard. 4 years ago I wanted to come home for good. I wanted to move back and go to UNCC but I didn't because something or someone told me to just stick it out and I did. Best choice of my life and now it hurts knowing that that chapter there is really over and I have to start anew. I'm not sad to be back, but I'm lost...where do I go, what do I do, who do I do it with...the list could go on. I want things to be like they were in Greenville and that's not going to happen. I know starting my internship will keep me pre-occupied but for the time being I'm very quiet, lonely, looking for my place, and trying to fit in to this new life that I'm trying to make. I feel like a circle piece of a puzzle made for a square piece. I know God has me in Charlotte for a reason. I prayed for Charlotte and one day I'll hopefully find the answer as to why I am back here. Why we all had to leave Gville...but until then I will try to be happy and continuously asking God to help me through because I know that He will-he has a plan and I am open to see what's ahead.

Miss you grandma

Well yesterday marked the one year anniversary of my grandmother's death...I can't believe that it has been an entire year. I miss her like crazy and it seems like more more and more as the days go by. I miss going to visit her at The Regency, I miss wheeling her into her room and picking her outfits out for the week w/her jewlery. I miss going to Wine and cheese on Friday's w/her and my grandpa. I miss her yelling at my uncle and I when we aggravate each other (or her) during family dinners. I miss her smell, her soft, gentle hands. I miss combing her soft, fluffy, white hair and painting her ever so long fingernails. I miss going home and her asking me how school is, whether she really wanted to know or not, I miss her asking me what was new and how my love life was. I just miss her! She was so strong, even when she felt so weak. She taught me so much in life whether she knows it or not. Getting together w/the family is not the same anymore and there is always something missing and it's her...I know that she is with us and watching down from heaven, but it doesn't always make the missing her part any easier. The day we had to say goodbye was probably the hardeset day of my life so far and it will forever be engraved in my mind. Looking at the casket during the wake knowing that she was in there, wishing this was a dream, wanting to yell out that they can't close her in there, that they can't bury her, nothing...why? because I'm not ready, because it can't be real-but I had to realize that I wasn't sleeping and this was reality and it was my grandmother's time to gain her angel wings and fly to heaven to be with her mother and father again! I miss you grandma and I love you!

I survived

So, I went to Oklahoma the other week with my mom, sister, and grandfather to visit family that I have never met before. It was awesome. However, we had to fly to get there and well....I'm not real big on flying. We had to switch planes in Houston and Atlanta and I really wasn't keen on that either-but I wanted to get there and this is what I had to do. I sat with my mom on the isle seat on all 4 planes and didn't start looking out the window until about the 3rd flight. However, being up above the clouds was just so surreal and amazing. I was in awe of God's glory. It was raining in OK when we left Monday evening and we got above those clouds and the sun was shining to brightly-if I didn't already believe this would have made me. I prayed the whole time we were on those flights for God to just keep us safe and get us there and back. I have never been so relieved to see my dad at midnight and to be on the ground. However,the trip itself was just so great. I meet 5 of 9 of my moms cousins, my grandfather's 78 year old sister and her husband and meet cousins I didn't know I had. It was awesome. For years I've thought that I had this tiny little family and now I know that I have quite a large family. And although they are miles away, we could still contact them if we were in need. Leaving was bittersweet-wondering if my grandfather would ever see his sister again or his niece and nephews. Its been 30 years since he's been to OK and probably a good 10 since he's seen his sister-my grandfather is 87 years old and will be 88 in September. And although when I look at him I do not see an 87 year old man I know he is and it makes me sad to think this may have been the last time until they meet again in heaven. He had so much fun and what a way to leave :) Just though I'd share these things.

Am I ready?

Over the past few weeks I have been extremely not busy to be able to sit and ponder life...this does not always go over well. I have really wondered if I am ready to leave Greenville, to leave the world I know, the friends I have made, the life that I have lived and have come to really enjoy over the past 4 years. I keep wondering if I've picked the right major if I can really do what I have been taught to do. Am I really ready to live in a world that I am no familiar with? The real world, the working world, the world of grown ups? College life has been so easy and I am elated about getting and internship and being able to move back to Charlotte and in with my sister...but will Charlotte be what I have known it to be once I'm back for good? Am I ready to not be immature when I want to be, to act like I have some sense when I don't always, to make new friends, when I've got ones here I like just fine, to pick another church-because who knows where I'll end up going once I'm back...Stough....Elevation....my own place???? God only knows. I trust God completly with my life and I know that He will take care of me and with Him by my side that I will be ready for what ever is thrown my way, but right now I'm questioning it all..why? Because it's change and I don't do well with change even though my life needs a change. Hopefully I can find some way to become ok with all of this by mid July when it's time to peace out of here but right now between my friends and I "leaving" isn't mentioned much and the summer is going way too fast for our liking!