Day 3: The most beautiful place that I've ever been.

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. -Leo Tolstoy

It’s been a rough 7 days.
1,2,3,4,5,6,7.
Seven days is how long I’ve been here in my new home.
I’ve gone through every emotion that I never even knew existed. From extremely anxious, to extremely sad, extremely lonely and extremely contemplative. Overall, I’ve found that the one thing that I miss the most about home was the comfort of true happiness that came so naturally with my perfectly comfortable life. I miss knowing that the people that I spent every day with really loved me and I miss them knowing that I really loved them. I miss being able to seize those moments of happiness on a daily basis.

Kara and I did some edit’s to our lists. We realized that writing about things we really cared about was more important than writing about “olives” and “italian art”. So, when she told me that she changed my topic to “The most beautiful place I’ve ever been (not necessarily physical)", I spent a good 24 hours trying to think through all the parts of the world I’ve been to, all the sights that I’ve seen and all the funny cultures that I’ve experienced. Until I realized that the most beautiful place that I’ve ever been was home.

It's easy to spend every day not even realizing how beautiful your life is. I never even cared about the weather in California, until I moved here and am learning to live in 60% humidity (which, by the way, is extremely foul.). I never even realized how important my yogurtland dates with my best friends were until now I miss those moments of happiness of a daily basis. I miss the beauty of convenience of my favorite people being 15 minutes away from everything I did. I miss my perfectly scheduled routine.I miss my coffee shop, I miss running into high school friends while doing errands, I miss the fun of small town drama, in-n-out, never having anything to do, my gym, my childhood room, the way the air smells when it rains, tanning for hours on end in 103 degree heat... It's a beautiful life.

I know this is the season of my life that God is taking me through, and I so fully trust that He is in control and that He promised to take me from glory to glory and that He won’t stop until I’m there. I know that I asked God to take this time, apart from my happiness of home, to show me who He wants me to be and not just who I want me to be. I know that God would never, ever ask me to live in a pain without showing me the purpose. I know that I am to be found here and that new moments of happiness are to be seized. And above all, I know that I know that I know that no matter where I am, new people, new faces or new scenery, that I will always have an undeniable love for my home; for the place that taught me what beauty even was, and for those people and those moments of happiness that are forever ingrained on my mind as God's small way of constantly reminding me that the most beautiful place I've ever been was because of the people and the memories, and not because of the location. And those are moments of happiness that I will seize wherever I am.

Some of my favorite memories with my favorite people:

"Why do we leave home, if only for a chance to return again?"