Adventurous Life

Journal entry dated 19 May 2010. Today I feel like a bird in a cage yearning to be free. I trap myself within rules, should dos, and ought to dos. I try to meet expectations, and all that happens is I die a little bit each time. Money is an issue. I am spending my own money on this trip with no guarantees I will ever get anything back. These are my savings for school, but I also have been saving for this trip. I want to be free, to enjoy the opportunities, to eat what I want and how ever much I want at meals without worrying about spending too much. My past financial spending failures and the voice of my father haunts me. As Marnie says, this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip--enjoy it. Chris says, it's only money. And I am trapped like a bird in a cage longing to be free. I want to live in freedom and grace. I want to stop beating myself up for the littlest thing. I want to live as God has intended. I want to live. Maybe that's why I enjoyed today so much. Desert and wilderness wit...

Journal entry dated 18 May. Today we went to many different tells and cities mentioned in the Old Testament.I guess what influenced me the most today was how brilliant people were back then. I recognize that this says more about my pride and the pride of my time. We think that we are so much smarter and know more than what people did back then. In some ways this is true, but the fault lies in that we think we are better than people back then. For instance, at Lachish they had a channel that served as a sewer taking the sewage out of the city. At Mareshah, they built their city under the top of the hill--actually inside the hill--because it would be cooler than out in the sun. Their engineers were brilliant! Their works have lasted thousands and thousands of years. It makes me wonder how long parts of our generation will last. My favorite part of today was looking for and finding potsherds at Lachish. There are centuries and millenia of history there, and it is starting (or has been) ri...