The last goodbye 

The end has come

To all my faithful reader(s), I send you greetings for the last time from the Down. I sit here now with boxes all around me, some full, some waiting, and one waiting for this computer exactly. I realized that tonight and tomorrow will be my last nights here. For when my boyfriend comes out from MB for the weekend I will be staying at my folks place for that is where he also stays. On Monday, when he has left I will be coming here to move out the rest of my stuff and spending my last days in Calgary at my parents house.

The Watership Down is in a disheveled state, only to become more so. Last night as I packed there was a curtain in my bathroom that I always loved. When I removed it I almost cried, for the ugly nakedness of the place really hit me. But at the same time as all of this there is a real sense of something great. A feeling of tarring down the old to get ready for the new. A real feeling of having finished what I came out here to do.

When first I moved here I was determined to learn. I felt a need to learn some very important things.
1: To truly live on my own and be happy. To get to a place where God would be my complete
source of joy.
2: To come to the point where I could care for myself, housing, food, and entertainment.
3: To come to a place in my life where not every other thought was "oh how badly I wished I
were married."
4: To finish my apprenticeship in hairdressing right down to the red seal.
5: To learn, if only a little, more clearly how it is God would have me relate to those around me.
6: To become a strong woman of God, this for two reasons. 1: For God, 2: For my future
husband.
Now when I say "finished" I do not feel I shall ever finish becoming the woman God created me to be. For when I am finished I shall be dead. Until that day I ask God continue to mold me into the person He would have me to be.

I now say adieu from the Watership Down. I invite you to travel with me as I move my way back to Manitoba. There I shall enter the arms of my love and move in new directions. New adventures I shall lead and you my friends shall hear of them both great and small. I wish you all well in your endeavors to come.
Ange

This long day

Here I sit with a cold in my head, it drips from all corners of my face. This cold started out strangely. It started in my chest before it even reached my throught or head. Today I have easily managed to sleep from 9:00 am to 12:00pm and look very forward to more. At this moment I await the arrivel of the first possible tenant of the down. I agreed to show the place for my Land lords seeing as they live out of town. The more I think about this the more I wonder how it will work. As I lay earlier in my bed I wondered how the signing of the lease should look. I don't think I want my name on there under "landlords signature".

The Down is ever so slowly being ripped of it's prize belonging. Soon the walls will be naked, the cupboards bare. Boxes will replace records and clothing. One small step at a time this place will dye, like the slowness of a desease. Two weeks from yesterday this place will be and must be emptied. It must happen, it must be packed by then.

Amazed

I was sitting here thinking back on the years that have passed. I was thinking particularly on the time around when first I met Nathaniel. I was first introduced to him over e-mail and it was not even him talking to me but instead my brother made mention of him while I was still in South Africa. I knew that he was not hoping by this mention that we would get together, instead it was a request for prayer for Nate.

Somehow when I read that e-mail I knew that Nate would be a larger part of my life than that time would even allow me to comprehend. I met him a few months later in person and I will say it was not love at first sight but instead intrigue. I saw a mystery below those dark eyes that I felt immediately would take a life time to solve. I felt a sudden desire to be known and to know fully. Only from afar did I allow myself to observe for I felt a strong fear that He would not wish to seek into the depths of me. That he would wish to find out more than just the outer (which some may look on and see as superficial) was a thought I did not allow myself to indulge.

Every opportunity to run into him I took. And the smile outside the practice room melted my heart. The comment made to my brother that no he did not see me as superficial. Or that look he gave me when first I would enter the university while he sat on the couches. Those made it all worth my while.

In the summer I heard about the girl back in Winnipeg, that was when I decided there could be no way he would go for me so I dropped the dream and moved on. But I still looked forward to the mystery driving down our lane to the house while I walked on the gravel roads. I always hoped for the news that he would be coming out but only Alex knew that for sure and he wasn't much for sharing information. I was always nervous to ask cause I didn't want to seem anxious or desperate.

The mystery of Nate still haunts me but now in a new manner. It is no longer the longing of 'will I know, will I be given the chance'. But now instead, the fact that it should take a lifetime to discover and the knowledge that I could never know it completely. This is the very thing that I first loved about Nate and it is the thing I look so forward to enjoying. I am amazed that I have been given this oppertunity, to be in on the secret that I thought would be kept from me forever.

120:

I don't know if I ever told you ("you" being anyone who has kept track of this blog from it's fresh begining down to it's last detail). Often I think on my first day entering this city with the knowledg that I would be living here.

I had decided to live here while still in hair school back in Brandon. Now when I was ready to move here I wanted to do it as soon as possible. On my last day of school I had every belonging I wished to have with me packed in the back of my car. The hour I was done school I was driving to Calgary. I felt that if this were to be what I was doing then I may as well get right on it. I arrived the next day in the afternoon and had no where much to go till the evening. That was when I would be heading to my borders home to settle in. So to pass the time I drove around the city. Mostly I stuck to down town

I drove with no real direction in mind and so managed to get lost (though I still do not feel you can truelly get lost when you have no real destination). in my wandering I happend to drive through a quant community. At the end of one of the dead end streets there was this copper top church. As I drove along the streets I thought to myself and even, I remember, prayed that I would like very much to live in a community like this one.

Months later after having lived with the Webbers I looked into this appartment and fell directly in love. The Webbers had told me that this was a good community. Again it was months later even possibly a year that I realised (after many a walk past that same copper top church) that this was the very place I had driven through and prayed to live in.

I think of this often, especially now that I will be leaving. Gods hand was entirely on me and my life while I was here. Every step I took He was the guide. It is this that I love to look back on. I look so forward to seeing how He will work in my life anew. Where shall I be led and in what new endevours? Now there is a wonderfull new aspect to how He will work. Another ingrediant. Nate, Now it will be for the both of us that God's wrokings will be an impact. It is no longer just one peice to fit into the puzzle of the world, but two. I look so forward to seeing Gods work done in our lives.