yesterday this was justin's status : We are a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing rooms and toothpaste, coveting one another's frozen dinners, hiding booze, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and laughing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together. with Keenan and Adam


i read it (and got pissed i wasn't tagged in it) and almost cried. yesterday i was really overwhelmed and sad that i was leaving. i literally never thought i'd have these emotions towards colorado. it's been so good lately though. challenging still but so good. trying to figure life out just like justin said. trying to work out life and faith and whatever. at young life in aspen they've been talking a lot at club and campaigners like What does it all mean? what does the cross mean what does jesus dying for you mean what does it all mean. and all I ever come back to is freedom. 


1. Freedom, independence, liberty  refer to an absence of unduerestrictions and an opportunity to exercise one's rights andpowers. Freedom  emphasizes the opportunity given for theexercise of one's rights, powers, desires, or the like: freedom ofspeech or conscience; freedom of movement. Independence  implies notonly lack of restrictions but also the ability to stand alone,unsustained by anything else: Independence of thought promotesinvention and discovery. Liberty,  though most often interchangedwith freedom,  is also used to imply undue exercise of freedom: Hetook liberties with the text. 9.  openness, ingenuousness. 12. license. 16.  run. 


run. which is funny because that's when i feel the most free. 


i know colorado is full of hippies and everyone's spiritual but not in a jesus sense and everyone's so chill. i think i've adopted some of that mentality into my faith. we really were made to feel free. we were not made to feel enslaved. we were given a choice in loving the lord or not. freedom. 


back to running- i run a lot here. maybe more than i did training for my half. not as many miles but i go on more runs. last week i ran without shoes on a trail and cut open both my big toes. i sent a picture to my boss and she said why would you do that and i said i didn't have shoes and i just wanted to feel free. i don't run fast here- 9,000 ft altitude and running up a mountain slows me down a lot. but i always feel free. the sun shines bright and some flowers are trying to bloom and it is beautiful here. 


i feel free to be myself. i feel freedom from being the funny girl, or the christian, or the young life leader. its nice to work out my faith for myself. and to make mistakes and figure those out too. it is nice to be chill and live in the simple pleasures of driving around a mountain and sitting in the dirt and getting excited to toss a frisbee because i haven't since december. i definitely live (i had to do some expense reports and forgot what i was going to say i live...) in freedom and the simple life here and that's nice. unencumbered by things. i can dig it.