Updates On My Life

  Well I have not posted anything on my blog in quite a while (as in about a week or so) - that's too long for me, and I have missed it!  I wanted to give a few updates on what is happening in my life and why I have been so busy!

Work Life

I have been working at Sonoco since December as a temp and I have thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated my time here!  It has been such a blessing working where I this whole time and I have been able to take care of myself in multiple ways.  This Friday, however, will be my last day here in preparation for returning to school and also preparing for marriage!In trying to take care of everything below at the same time as working 40hour weeks right now... I have had a lot of pressure on myself to make sure everything gets done and taken care of.

Home Life

We have a month-old litter of adorable kittens, there were four of them.  However, one of our older cats died outside without a real understanding as to why.  Then one of our older kittens died without explanation.  Then we lost two of our baby kittens without a reason... We are thinking that they must have gotten to some of the chemicals the farmers have been putting on their fields next door and they are being poisoned and dying :(  It makes me really sad because I love all of our cats and kittens... If you wonder why we have so many felines, it's because we live in the country and have six acres of land, surrounded by three different crop fields (easily 7 football fields completely) and about two acres of woods.  We have a good variety of woodland creatures, including mice, huge rats, and snakes.  Cats are our defense against these icky things from crawling into our house.

Also, mom has been in need of some medical attention with an injury to her knee she has acquired from yardwork, as well as some surgery that she is recovering quickly from.  Being the eldest child, and the only other adult in the house, I have been rushing around taking care of everything she can't.  Please keep her health and recovery in your prayers.

School

In the past few weeks, I have become a packing nazi, trying to get everything organized into boxes and bags in an orderly fashion.  I have everything div-ied up according to whose car it will be traveling in: mine or Frank's.  At the current moment, it looks like my room is a wreck because of everything stacked on one side, but it will be gone next weekend!

At the current moment, I don;t know if I will have two roommates or one this semester... The plan was this: my first roommate (and great friend) Alyssa was going to be my roommate again this year in a three room dorm.  Our third roommate, Sarah (who is also a good friend) was going to be going on internship to India.  Now Sarah is not going to India, but I don't know if she'll be coming back to room wth us, or if she'll be going somewhere else...  Either way, I am fine with it and I'm excited to be in an air conitioned room where I can determine my own sleep schedule!!!!!

I am looking forward to going back to school, but financial things are starting to slide from stable to ...how did someone forget to tell me this?  I'm wondering more and more if God has something planned for me besides college.  I really want to be able to go and finish school very soon, but I amlearning to understand that the human view of success is finishing college; God's view of success is carrying out His Will all my life - He doesn't need me to have a degree to do that ;)  I guess we'll see where God leads!

Blog Life

I have always been crafty and I have always loved music (ask my annoyed roommates).  In honor of the gifts and talents God has given me, I have created two new blogs: The Mezzanine and The Craft Room.  I have been working fervently on both of them to get some posts prepared for the Fall semester since I doubt I will have much time to create one along the way.  So instead of paying attention to This blog (Fly From The Highest Swing), I have been working on construction of other ones to come!

Be on the lookout for them and please enjoy them - they are a lot more work than this one has been and it's really encouraging to see pageviews go up!!

Frank Life

Frank and I have been having a hard time getting things and plans for our wedding taken care of since we are not constantly together to work on them.  We are undecided at the moment as to whether we will be sending out save the dates, and also when to start the next step!  These are things that we planned for, but it's hard to get them to fall in to place when you're an hour and a half away for three weeks at a time! :s

However, I am looking forward to January when we are planned to wed!  And I love him more than I did yesterday :)  We have already started pre-marital counselling with our friend and college pastor, Josh, and we will be starting pre-marital counselling with his grandpa soon - he is going to be marrying us...

Spiritual Life

Lighthouse Bible Study has ended, it ended last night.  I have an entire summer's worth of Bible lessons from the book of James and it feels so good to have gotten it all done!  I have learned not to expect ministry to go the way I plan my lessons, but accept the fact that God is in control - not me!  Along with encouraging the group to pray and know God more, I have also felt the Holy Spirit telling me the same thing.  At one point, I lost Bible for two weeks. Accepting the fact that I was clinging on to the material of the Bible, rather than the Word, I realized that God may have given my Bible to someone who needed Him.  That's when I found it :) Then it got run over by a few semi trucks the next day... Satan was really after me, but he did not defeat me.  And now God's strength has shown through that time!! 

The Future?

I don't know entirely what my future holds, except that I will be getting married to Frank in January and I am called to the missions fields of Sweden!  Past that, everything is up in the air, and I am - contrary to regular Jessica - okay with knowing that.  If I end up going a completely different direction in this menial world, it's going to be judged by other humans, and I will be pur down and talked about.  But I know that following God is more important than following sneers.  And I'm okay with that :)

So that is the basic run-down update of my life, and I look forward to posting another one soon!!  It will more than likely be another blog about the political crap in America because of some things NPR has revealed to me on accident recently.  I'll let you know when that one comes about!! :)