Thanks to jet-lag we were awake at 3:30 yesterday morning which made for the perfect opportunity to walk to the beach and watch the sunrise. It was SO beautiful! Excuse the slightly crooked photo! My fingers were frozen.
I am a super extrovert married to another super extrovert, if there is such a thing. We are such "people people" that we make normal extroverts cringe. Really. We are constantly surrounded by friends— we love making friends, we love inviting friends to sleep over, and we love sleeping over. When we travel we are often asked whether we would like to stay in a hotel alone together or in someone’s home, we always prefer the home because we love getting to know the people who live there. Last year we were given a weekend vacation in Palm Springs and when we arrived to our little condo it took everything in us not to call our friends and ask them to join us because the place was so cool. Most nights we have at least one skater sleeping over, this past week we had around 15 there every night. Whenever we go to a new country I can’t help but invite my friends who live nearby to come visit. My thought process goes something like this, “I’m going to Spain! Perfect! I should tell every European friend I have to come see me!” or “Yes! We are going to Korea! That’s close to China! Let’s ask my friends there to come stay with us!” I do it in America too- I am always inviting different friends to come stay with us in Michigan for Christmas, and whether we are visiting Shaun’s fam or mine in Colorado, they are both accustomed to us spending every waking minute hanging with people we love. We love each other. And we love friends. That is how we do life.
But something new is happening for us. Maybe it’s the baby girl who is growing inside of me right now or maybe it’s all the words in my head that desperately need to be written on paper and spoken on camera. Maybe it’s simply a need for balance. Whatever it is, Shaun and I are both certain that right now, this time while I’m in Spain, is a time for me to be more introverted. It’s not a time for me to round up everyone I love and invite them to come stay with us. It’s not even a time for me to hit the streets and start making new friends. I don’t need to pack my days with coffee dates and lunch dates and I don’t need to launch a small group or start a ministry that will last beyond my time here. Actually what I need is time to write, time make the videos that I’ve been planning to make for months and months now, and time to rest. We hope I’ll blog a lot while I’m here. We hope I’ll finish my book too. We hope my Spanish will improve and that our marriage will be strengthened and that the few visitors we do have coming will feel richly blessed by my focused attention. We also know that I’m not an introvert. So as much as I will love taking time to focus on these few particular things, I’ll also treasure the time I get to spend with the friends I already have here in Barcelona. I don’t have many. But the ones I have are gold, and hanging out with them will be one of my favorite things to do.
So that’s that.
You’ll hear from me more than you normally do on this little blog and I’m sincerely looking forward to that. There is so much I have been wanting to say to you and I feel grateful to finally have the time set aside to say it. I pray that this place remains one of genuine encouragement to you. As I’ve said before, I won’t pretend to be perfect here and I hope you don’t either. What you’ll get here will be real thoughts about real life. I’ll continue to share openly about things as I see them, and I’ll do my best to keep reminding you about the living God, Who in His tender love, is working everything out for our good and for His glory.
You are precious. Thanks for visiting my blog. And please forgive me in advance if I don’t invite you to sleepover over during these next few months. I hope you understand.
Gratefully,
your super-extroverted, attempting-to-be-introverted,
friend.
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