Well, this isn't quite what I'd planned....

..... but we not following my plan, so its ok!

I'm sat in a friends spare room writing this. 

This is going to be home for the next few weeks.

I've had my first day at WEST, and it has been fantastic! So much information to take in, but absolutely amazing. Trying to pick my modules... do I just do Greek, or do I do Hebrew too? Pneumatology or Introduction to the Philosophy of religion?

All i really want to do is sit down and talk it through with Rachael, which I sort of was able to do, but only over Skype.

Since our last post there has been a delay with our house in Bridgend meaning that we can't move in until the 30/09/2011, which is a problem seeing as we moved out of our house on Friday! So I am staying down here with Friends, whilst Rach and Jacob stay in York, and our furniture is spread between parents houses and Tom's garage.

And yet as I sit here I can't help but feel encouraged. Don't get me wrong I miss Rachael and Jacob bitterly and want nothing more that to give them a great big cuddle! But I still somehow feel encouraged?

I think back to how i felt a month or so ago and, if I'm being honest, how i was beginning to doubt that everything would happen in time, that we would sell the house and I would be able to start this September, and now I'm sat here having had my first day. Ok it isn't quite the way I had envisioned it, but I'm here!

We've been praying and trusting that God is in control of all the circumstances that led up to the house selling and me being accepted and finding the perfect home, in the perfect location ..... so why should we now doubt that God is now any less in control?

To think that because it hasn't happened the way we thought and planned, it must have gone wrong, how foolish! God knows why its happened and we may never understand, but there is a reason. Perhaps I'm meant to learn something? 

As i was thinking about my situation coming back from WEST this evening i was reminded of this passage:

²⁵Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, ²⁶ "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters,yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. ²⁷ Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. ²⁸For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does notfirst sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? ²⁹Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, ³⁰saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.' ³¹Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? ³²And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. ³³ So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Luke 14 v 25 - 33

Perhaps God needs me to learn that in a very real and practical way?

It's hard, but I can't fully lean on Rachael at the moment, so i have to lean on Him.

And maybe thats the point?