Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.

[Quote in title by: Oliver Wendell Holmes]

When you're in a state of transition, not feeling a part of anywhere really, you begin to find the smallest things to make you feel grounded. When there is no profound sense of home at the moment, your heart begins to remember the places it has left pieces of itself. And this is where I find myself lately.

After living out of a suitcase for 16 days in waiting for my Visa and my chance to leave the U.S. and begin my journey in Scotland, I find myself living inside my mind a lot. I mean, to be real, I have all the time in the world to think at the moment and this can be both good and bad at times, but for the most part I find myself envisioning places that I love dearly...

Christikon from "Picture Point" up the Bridge Creek Trail

Christikon is a place that I have fallen in love with over the past three summers. That, and it has fueled a love for Montana and the surrounding, beautiful mountains in the area. In my free time or times when I need to have what I like to call "Amanda time" I will often sit by the prayer trees in the ever-changing meadow and listen to the stories that the Boulder River has to tell. This is my happy place. And though the environment is beautiful and peaceful the most beautiful piece of Christikon is the people. This place doesn't pack much punch without the loving community it holds. This will ever be a place that I long for my future children to spend time in and will remember summers spent beneath the trees and at the highest mountaintops.

Lift Bridge at Lake Superior, Duluth, MN

Duluth, Minnesota is what I think of when I think of the beauty that Minnesota contains. Many times as a child, my family would drive up for a long weekend just to be in Duluth to watch the leaves turn colors. If you drive over this bridge and continue to the dead end, you will come to a beach with the smoothest sand where we would have a picnic lunch, enjoy the sun, and watch huge ships come into the bay. The North Shore not only contains this great city, but also Tofte, Grand Marais and Lutsen. I believe that hiking through Gooseberry Falls and other national parks around the area is where my love for hiking was started and I will forever love sitting on the large rocks, drinking a hot cup of coffee and watching the waves.

Bell tower at Concordia College, Moorhead, MN

I am convinced that Concordia College in Moorhead, MN has one of the MOST BEAUTIFUL campuses in the world. Even though the winters can be rough, it is clear that they can also be beautiful. This belltower rings every 15 minutes from 8am to 10pm everyday. Also, you will rarely find a Cobber walking underneath the tower alone because of the old saying that says that if you walk under alone, you will be alone forever, but if you walk under with your significant other or another person, that is the person you will be with for the rest of your life. Some take is very seriously and others couldn't care less. Confession: I didn't walk under it until graduation day. Anyway, Concordia is where my love for learning was fostered. Not only was I given an education and degree, but a love for community, service, interfaith dialogue, and sense of place in the world and call to action in the world as well. No matter how much this school cost, what I have been given from this institution will forever outweigh that cost. Soli Deo Gloria!

Elm Creek Park Reserve, Maple Grove, MN

Elm Creek Park Reserve is a quick 15 minute walk from my house and contains some great trails for running, biking, rollerblading, or walking. There is also a sweet swimming hole and HUGE jungle gym as well as a nature center deep in the center of the park. Every time I am visiting my parents at home I go through a run in this park. This is a place where my family and family friends would have summer BBQs as well as swim for hours. This is also a place where I put into many miles of running in order to train for a race or just to clear my head. And in the winter, there is a big sledding hill that is now a tubing hill where my family would go to sled late into the night laughing and hauling our sleds up and down the hill just to enjoy time together. People love to cross country ski here and it is a popular spot for school groups to have a field trip for the day. All in all, this is one of the many reasons I love to visit my family and this park has given me many fond memories as a child and an adult.

Of course, there are many places on this earth that I feel drawn to, but the ones named above have had an exponential impact on me and my development and growth. These are pieces of what my heart calls and feels at home. So even though, I may be feeling in transition an displaced, I find comfort in knowing that I have somewhere to go back to through memories, pictures, and stories. In this next year, I may be adding another spot to my list and this excites me. 

Hope all is well with you. I think of all of you daily. Thank you for weaving your stories through these pictures and being a part of this journey.