A purchase of a "Prayer is the Key" token at my campus bookstore spurred my roommate and I to a two hour discussion at our local coffee shop. It was the type of scenario I had always dreamt I would have in college; sitting in the local coffee shop, discussing life, hearing different ideas being said about the world, expressing my own ideas.  I just never thought that it would be about my spirituality.

For the last year, I have taken steps toward enriching my spiritual side and investigating the workings of believing there's a higher being who created us, is guiding us.  I've gone to my friend's Friday night bible studies and discovered that there exists Christians who dispel previous stereotypes I have had of the group.  I've had many a chats and talks with my Christian and non-Christian friends and family.  

I've been lucky to have been touched by God and have felt a life with him.  Because this world is constantly craving labels for everything, I suppose the label I would have to give myself at this moment of my life is "spiritual" but not Christian.  I'm not because I haven't yet fully given my faith to Jesus Christ yet and until I do so, I do not want to go around pretending to be someone I don't think I completely am yet.  However, I can say that he has brought me fulfillment, a sense of peace and a sense of belonging that I had never felt before.  

I'm not very eloquent at expressing my beliefs.  I've come to discover this when having my talk with my roommate.  She, a staunch atheist, would ask me questions that I'd blubber and stammer to explain.  "It's just a feeling," I'd say.  "What is this feeling?" she'd ask and I'd be stumped again.  Sometimes I got what I was trying to express across and sometimes I think she understood but a lot of the times, I would just get frustrated because we were completely having an "apples and oranges" conversation.  Sometimes she said very unbelievably snobby and naive things that made me all the more realize what ignorance can do to someone.  I tried my best to explain my current situation to her and to talk to her about what changes I've undergone in the last year but I don't think she would even have a tenth of an idea of what I'm talking about until she can experience it for herself.

I was very grateful for our talk because it made me realize all the more ignorant I still am about God.  I still have so much more to learn, so much more changes to go through.  Perhaps next time when I talk to my roommate, I would be able to clearly explain to her my spirituality.

That's also why I haven't posted anything about my journey with God in here until now.  I've never really known what to write and how to say it.  

Now back to that pesky little conversation starter of a prayer key.  I think I'm at the point in my trip where I'm getting really home-sick. I never thought it would happen to me since I've stayed here for a bit before, have had family here and am such a nomad but I got hit with the bug.  I'm trying to bide my time with constant phone calls to home and reading a lot but nothing's been really helping.  I just wanna go home and hang out with my grandparents.  Hence, I pray that everybody at home is doing well and will only get better. I pray that I get over my homesickness since I will be here for four more months no matter what and that I just cherish the time I have here while it lasts.  I pray that I will strengthen my relationship with God and that he will guide me as I truly live alone for the first time in my life. (Aunts and cousins who live ten minutes away do not count!)  I pray that I will stop missing you, you and especially you so much.