As I sit here in the airport getting ready to fly home for the summer, I can’t help but be in awe of everything that the Lord has done for me in these last several weeks. Since most of you haven’t heard, I’ll have to catch you up.
First of all, I have officially survived my first year of graduate school, and to top that off, I finished this semester with a 4.0! I am so thankful that this semester was easier than the last one, and of course thankful to the Lord for helping me to keep my sanity every step of the way. But I must admit, even though I love school, I am anxious to get home and relax for a while before coming back to Greenville to tackle my second (and hopefully final) full year.
Secondly, the Stuarts have a new puppy! Not many of you know, but my parents had to put Kida down suddenly in February when she had a sudden onset of cancer. As you can imagine, this was an extremely difficult time for our whole family. Kida had been such a light in our lives and at first I didn’t think it was fair that she had been taken from us so soon and unexpectedly. But my family was able to help me see the situation in a different light. We realized that Kida was given to me as a gift; each of us had a different way of coping with what happened to our family a few years ago, and Kida was how I got through it. So my family said that since it was time for her to leave us, that meant that I had healed from the experience and was back to where I needed to be emotionally. I definitely agreed with this conclusion; thanks to the Lord’s faithfulness and patience with me, I am in a better place emotionally and spiritually than I have been in a very long time. Based on this, I understood that it was time for that fluffy angel to be taken from my life, and for me to continue on, being stronger for having her with me the for the time that I did. Kida will always be a part of my life, and not having her at home to greet me will be really difficult, but it will be made easier by the presence of sweet little Breeze.
Thirdly, and most importantly, these last few weeks have been filled with accomplishments within my program. I went to an awards ceremony to accept the two scholarships I was awarded this semester, both of which will help pay for the school year next year since my remission will most likely not be renewed. I also completed my scientific diving certification, which involved 16 dives in a quarry in North Carolina as well as two dives on the shipwreck Indra on the North Carolina coast. The quarry dives tested all the skills we learned in our scientific diving course. I performed very well for the majority of the tasks and was amazing my colleagues and instructors with my resilience to the “cold water” in the quarry. Considering that the water was in the low 60s, the warmest I have ever been diving in, I was in heaven, swimming around in just a partial wetsuit and eventually just a swimsuit with my thin rashguard on top.
It’s so funny to me that I am such an enigma to people here, but it further proves that I am in the right field of study. This hot-bloodedness that has been the bane of my existence my entire life, is now proving to be what sets me apart from my colleagues. This was further proven during our time in Sheboygan, Wisconsin these last few weeks for field school. We all had a great time working on the Atlanta shipwreck, in spite of the many challenges we faced from the elements as well as sickness and ear infections amongst our team. The weather was nice, but the water was hard for most of my teammates to handle considering the warmest it got was a whopping 53 degrees. However, my diving in the Northwest prepared me and I was completing almost 90 minute dives, extending my work time significantly. I was quite proud of all that I learned and accomplished while in Wisconsin and so proud of our team for battling through and finishing the job we were given. As a result of hundreds of hours of work, we now have a beautiful scaled drawing of the Atlanta that will be added to a thesis as well as a site report, not to mention all the information we gathered and skills we acquired during our time there.
In addition to all of this, I have also changed my apartment location and now live in a house with the intern for Campus Christian Fellowship and some of the other students involved in the ministry. I am so excited to be living with these amazing people and even more excited to see what God has in store for all of us this next school year.
So that, in a blog-size nutshell, is what has been going on in my life the last couple months. I have learned and done so much this last year it is absolutely crazy! This trip home and the rest and relaxation that will come with it has been much anticipated and I can’t believe I’m within 12 hours of being back in Portland! Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers this summer as I conduct thesis research and prepare for a very busy second year of graduate school. Thanks everyone!!!
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