so close, and still so far

5 months from today, I am supposed to be getting married. 5 months from today, I am not getting married.

I don't know what happened. Maybe it was the stress of the wedding itself that tore us apart. Maybe it just never would have been right. Either way, here I am alone again.

I have to try and trust that God will lead me through this, that He will eventually bring me someone I really will spend the rest of my life with. I've been praying about this situation, and God has answered my prayers (well, some of them at least) in the most amazing way. Someone I thought was gone from my life forever is here again, and I couldn't be happier. An ex boyfriend and I started talking again a couple weeks ago. I prayed for God to bring him back into my life if it was right, and there he was at Water's Edge the next night. We talked then, at church the next Sunday, and in the parking lot of Chili's until 1 am the Tuesday after that. It was so wonderful to be there with him, spending time together and having fun conversations like we used to. Of course, at least one of those conversations centered around what went wrong, and what it meant that we were speaking again. I told him flat out how God answered my prayers, that I missed him, and that I wanted to give our relationship another try. And guess what. He didn't run away. In fact, he told me how sorry he was for how much he hurt me. He told me he wanted to be friends, for real this time. He held me in his arms and apologized for not being there for me, promised he wouldn't disappear again.

If that means anything, I don't really know. But every time I pray about it, I feel God telling me that this time it's going to be different. My ex said he wasn't ready for another relationship right now (and neither am I), but let's keep getting to know each other again and see where things lead. So at least that door is open. It's better than things have been between us in the last 3 years. I want to be with him again, that much I do know. I've always wanted to be with him. I think, now that both of us have had time apart to grow and figure things out, being together again would be amazing. I think we could actually make it work.

For now, I'm headed off to church with Tyler. I'll see my ex there, and hopefully we'll get to spend some time together. I just have to keep praying and trusting God that wherever this goes, it's going to be for the best.

During summer session, UGA is almost surreal. It's this huge campus normally teeming with students rushing from class to class, but from May to July it's quiet and almost relaxed. I can normally hear 5 or 6 conversations going on at once at Jittery Joe's, but right now I hear nothing. Total silence, except for the occasional cough or tapping of a keyboard. It makes me want to stay here all day and just escape everything.

I've been having a lot of dreams about my wedding lately. Dreams where everything goes wrong, like the most recent one in which I forgot to have my dress altered, there was no wedding cake, and another reception was going on where ours was supposed to be. I know these are completely ridiculous things that would never actually happen (even I, in all my ADD moments, would not forget to have my wedding gown altered), but I still wake up in freak-out mode. Then I see Mike next to me, sleeping peacefully with our puppy laying on his chest, and everything's better, at least for a little while. The thing that scares me is it makes me wonder if getting married is really the right thing for me right now. Maybe it's just pre-wedding jitters, I don't know. I hope so. The wedding is 6 months from tomorrow and I'm nervous that it's creeping up on me so quickly. I'm afraid we won't be able to get everything done in time, or something will be overlooked.

I just want December to be here and the wedding to be over with. I'm trying to deal with it all by just picturing myself with my new husband on our honeymoon, enjoying Disney World and looking forward to our new life together.

puppy update!

Mike and I picked up Chloe this morning, and she's doing great. We had so much fun playing with her and getting her used to her new home. After she sniffed everything in the apartment (and got sprayed in the face with water a few times for trying to get into the garbage), we took her out for a little walk and she met another neighborhood puppy. Hopefully soon we'll have some nice weather so we can take her to the dog park.

She really is the sweetest thing ever. She's so smart, too. She can already sit on command, and she's learning how to shake. The only thing we couldn't get her to do was take a nap! She was having too much fun playing and running around. 

Here are a few pictures of my little cutie:

You can tell just by looking at her how curious she is.

She's very affectionate, and likes to give hugs.

She also loves licking people...

...sitting in laps...

...and playing with Mike. :)

I'm sure there will be more pictures to come soon!

Thanks for all the prayers over the weekend, because it worked - Chloe is coming home tomorrow! 

I was a nervous wreck yesterday, calling the animal shelter every hour to find out if she'd been adopted. The two people ahead of me either decided they didn't want to or couldn't adopt her, or found another dog first, so now she's mine! Mike and I played with her a good while yesterday after filling out the adoption papers (she had to go get spayed before she could come home with us). She ran right up to me when she saw me coming to her kennel, and had a fun time running around the pen. She took to Mike right away, climbing up into his lap when he sat down to pet her. It was hilarious, actually. She's small, but not exactly a lap dog. We noticed we'll have to work with her on not jumping on furniture - she loved jumping up on the benches. But despite the jumping habit, she's really well-behaved. Unlike my first dog, she didn't go crazy when she saw another animal. Well, except for the Doberman that everyone was barking at! She's already learning to respond to her name, and seems to be pretty good walking on a leash.

Mike and I went to Walmart and Target to get dog stuff yesterday, and I had too much fun. I got her cute pink and blue striped bowls, a pink polka-dotted collar (with matching leash) and a pink heart-shaped name tag. Tyler laughed at me when I came home with all this stuff, but he's excited to have a dog around. 

I guess that's enough about my dog for one day. I'll post pictures soon, but for now here are the other two from the animal shelter website!

Mike and I have been thinking about adopting a dog for a while. My parents have my dog and I can't bring him here with me (something about him being a German Shepherd/Chow mix, the apartment managers won't let me have him...), and I miss having a pet. So today, we went to the Athens-Clarke County animal shelter and found the most amazing little puppy! We don't know if we'll be able to get her, because we're third in line for the adoption. But she's perfect and I'm praying so hard that I can have her. She's a 6-month-old lab/retriever mix, and the sweetest thing I have ever seen:

We were able to take her out of the kennel and play with her, and she was so much fun. She's a curious and playful puppy, but still calm and well-behaved. I'll find out Monday if I get her and, if all goes well, she'll come home with me Tuesday! I hope I'm not jinxing anything, but her name will be Chloe. :)

Pray for me; I know this little girl would make my world so much brighter!

Finals are (thank God) almost over. I nearly missed a psych final this morning because I thought it was at 9:00 when it was actually at 8:00. Thankfully I made it there in time, after miraculously not being pulled over for doing 80 all the way to campus. 

The last week has been pretty crazy, with finals, my birthday, and getting ready for Christmas. I was scared for a while that being out of work over the break would mean no money for rent or my car payment, much less Christmas gifts. But 12Stone's Intentional Acts of Christmas pretty much saved me. The church handed out $300,000 in cash to its members a couple weeks ago, to be used to help someone over the holidays. With the $100 each Mike and I got, we helped my parents buy Christmas presents for my sisters. Without that, they probably wouldn't have had anything. My mom's been out of work for almost a year, and my dad doesn't make much as a bookstore manager. Knowing that Christmas was the last thing they were worried about, it felt good to be able to help them (not to mention, I LOVE Christmas shopping). 

The Intentional Acts of Christmas ended up helping me too, though. A couple weeks ago I posted on the website about my needs, and someone contacted me and gave me a little bit of help. More than I expected, actually. It's because of things like this that I am learning day by day how to rely on God for my every need.

So now, I'm off to find my wonderful fiance a birthday present (he's 25 on Wednesday!), then study for my last final, Personality Theories. I will be nothing short of ecstatic when exams are finally over!

I think I'll try defying gravity

After being in Athens for six months, I think I have just now started to appreciate how awesome and beautiful this place can be. I lived here once before, about 14 years ago. But actually being a student at UGA is (expectedly) so much different. It has definitely taken some getting used to after going to Perimeter for almost three years. I went from a tiny college with five buildings to a huge university where I had to rearrange my schedule because 15 minutes wasn't enough time to get from class to class. It's impossible to get on a bus during class changes, just as impossible to find somewhere to study during finals week, and sharing a campus with 30,000 other students can get pretty overwhelming. But I can honestly say I have loved every minute of it. To me, there's something really cool about finding the perfect place to study (which I found yesterday - the second floor I didn't know existed in the Starbucks downtown), or sitting in the SLC with a coffee from Jittery Joe's and watching all the people walk by. They're such little things, but they make the whole experience even better.

Since I've been here, I've done a lot of thinking about what I want to do after graduation. I'm only a few classes away from having a BA in psychology, but there's not much in that field without a graduate degree. None of the grad school programs here looked that interesting to me, so I've decided to go back to my freshman-year plan of trying to go to medical school. This means I have to stay at UGA at least another semester beyond when I planned to graduate. I have to take six extra classes in chemistry and physics, and take the MCAT sometime in the next year or so. If you're wondering, yes, I'm crazy. I've wondered if I can even do it, because my grades have honestly not been wonderful lately. But I think if I really try and put my mind to it, 

I can get there somehow. 

I guess with this, and everything else, I'll just have to wait and see.