today's theme: gray

It's just a gray day. Not in a bad sense. It's just gray. The sky, except for a few glimpses of sun and blue patches earlier, is gray. The lake is gray. Even the air has a strange gray quality and my thoughts are mostly gray and fuzzy. And I'm wearing a gray shirt, but that is purely coincidence.

The truth is, I love gray days. Sunny days have their place, but gray days float my boat, and we get plenty of them here at the Bodensee. These are the days that I get inspired, that call to me to get outside and walk or run, and when almost always without fail I feel compelled to write, and this is why I'm sitting here writing instead of taking a nap like I should.

I've utterly failed in writing publicly since arriving in Germany, but that doesn't mean that I've stopped writing. My journal has far fewer empty pages, and my computer hard drive is full of late night typed up journal entries, when my I had to empty my thoughts faster than handwriting would allow.

I don't consider myself a writer, but in the past few years writing has become a part of me. I never have anything of real importance to say, but there always comes a point when my thoughts drive me crazy until I write them down. Writing is how I sort through my gray thoughts, how I de-stress, and if I am unable to write when the need arises, well, I don't even want to think what would happen if I found myself in that situation.

As I said, I've written in my journal quite a bit in the past four months (hard to believe that there are only two months left until I leave Germany). I wrote about coming to Germany, about why I thought God brought me here, the questions I found myself asking God, about life, thoughts about my future, and about this guy named Jacques. But that's a looooong story. I might tell it someday.

Gray days also make me feel reflective, and today as I look back on the last four months I see time after time when God has shone through the gray haze and enlightened my path. He has made His ways more clear, has shown me where He is leading me next, and continued to reveal truth. I am comforted in knowing that I serve a God who delights in making His ways known and gives light in the grayness. When I don't see my way, I can be certain that He does, and that He will guide me.

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Psalm 32.8

(some pictures I took by the lake)