My flatmate made up a huge part of the year, and there are so many experiences I would likely not have recieved without her. I would never have been in the Holyrood palace gardens or stood a few feet away from the Earl of Wessex, probably would not have seen Edinburgh except through the windows of a passing train, nor would I have gotten to visit Cumbria, climb the Old Man of Coniston, or witness an afternoon of sheepdog trials in Rydal.

        I certainly wouldn't have gotten to walk a portion of Hadrian's wall, celebrate Burns supper with a very engaging group of people in Dundee, or randomly walk down Strawberry lane along which Robert Murray McCheyne once lived. 

        Mountains without trees are peculiar things, not to mention sheep roaming about beside popular hiking trails. At least they were strange to me. My flatmate got plenty of laughs at my incredulity.

      Also, who puts a guest book in a set of public bathrooms? I'll thank Eilidh for seeing the humour in it and putting her own name down for making me follow suite. 

          I don't generally like visiting gardens for fun, but I liked them in Scotland...the way they make them wild but tame and perfectly ordered at the same time is a mystery which Americans have yet to learn.

        I don't particularly like lakes at home either. I associate them with flies, and noise, and a lot of silt and sand. Yet there is no comparison between an American lake and a Scottish loch. The silence that strikes you first as you enter a basin created by lordly, green and grey slopes is a wonder, and the way the water manages to sparkle even while being completely grey isn't something you shrug off. The flies weren't horrible even in August.

        Even in England, it is a joy to head out to church while a herd of sheep jostles and baa's at you from a nearby pen.
          Also, the views from a mountain top when the trees are scarce, is quite a sight for beauty's exultation.

             Dry stone shelters for the storm beleaguered wayfarer do not come amiss even when there is no storm, even when the sheep have obviously been enjoying them too.

English lakes are not as nice as Scottish ones, but still lovely, and a steamboat trip makes it twice as fun.
Even when you manage to take a wrong turn in the middle of the Yorkshire dales, there is beauty in abundance to behold, even when your traveling companion takes a picture of you at quite the unflattering moment.

    And nowhere else can you complete your hike in the hills with a stroll into the nearby church where people have worshiped for hundreds of years.

        Getting lost and then finding our way back to where we needed to be via a circuitous and sometimes rather annoying route served to be a regular means of locomotion for my companion and me,

 And some lakes certainly did not look as nice up close as they did from far away.

     Yet when all was said and done, it all added to the time spent there, the memories made, the laughs, the conversations, the scenes that were beautiful and the ones that were not were all a part of it. God worked it together for our good and His glory.

      It's rather like things here in the end. I realised recently that I spend a lot of time complaining about here. I've always hated NC even before I went to Scotland, and even more so when I returned, it felt drab, ugly, hot, slow, and boring. Yet, how many wonderful times have I spent within those hot and boring shades? How many times have I glimpsed beauty in the curling of a path or the way the trees joined hands above it? How many times have I marveled at the way NC has of surprising me suddenly with a beautiful bit of landscape, mist over Jordan lake on a foggy afternoon, or wild rolling hills along the edges of hwy 49 in Liberty? 

       The truth is, friends, that while the lines of the bard expressed in the poem at the beginning lines are true...I will forever hold Scotland dear in my heart, it is not true as I have often felt in moments of despondency, that there is no beauty or joy to be found here, exactly where God has me right now.

      Many of you have asked what I'm going to do now, and perhaps I hate that question most of all because I only have a hazy outline at the moment, and a lot of my dreams and wishes for the future are completely out of my control. Yet still, He who has seen me through thus far will continue to the end, of that I have been repeatedly reminded through life's circumstances. So, I'll say now I don't know precisely what's next. There are a lot of things I have no certainty in whatsoever. However, I do know who holds my future, and I know who holds my hand. And in that, friends, I find cause for rejoicing, even when I miss Scotland, the church, the people, the weather, and all the stonework.

          

       It is onward, my friends, and I invite you all to continue with me on this unknown journey.