Ruth's Ramblings

I'm pretty much done with passing out my surveys and getting the responses back. I have 85 surveys back, thanks to my old profs who let me get data from their classes. My old profs are cool. They jokingly threatened that everyone better participate in my study or it would affect their grades. One prof (my field instructor's ex-husband) even gave a little speel on what goes, comes back around -- meaning that his students ought to be respectful of my study or else when they do their own theses, it'll bite them back when their own subjects screw around.

So yesterday I was pretty much pooped -- stayed on campus practically all day getting those surveys out. I also busted my butt doing alot of reading and note-taking for my upcoming lit review chapter (the 20-pager that I keep complaining about). I came home around 7:30pm, right when Todd and Pastor Alan drove up to my door. I was pleasantly surprised to see Pastor Alan -- especially with his new goatee. Makes him more distinguished looking. In anycase, it was great to see him out and about and doing well health-wise. We missed him so much. Anyways, for the rest of the evening, during the guys' accountability meeting, I pretty much tried to stay away and hide in the master bedroom (Wayne & I finally moved into the master over the weekend, by the way) with Mike's laptop. I know they would feel weird if a girl was around when they are sharing their deepest darkest secrets. Hehehe. So I was upstairs typing away at my Chapter 2, and talking to Priscilla on the phone. We had a good talk about the woes of life and she wanted some advice on how to minister to Enoch during his times of crisis. So I basically told her how Wayne helped me during those times too -- and my talk seemed to encourage her and make her feel better about things. I also reassured her that whatever Enoch is experiencing now, is totally normal (Wayne and I were expecting it anyways) and I went through it just the same too. And now, looking back, if I had to go through my whole ordeal over again (which I wouldn't), I would do everything exactly as I would have done before. I have absolutely no regrets on ANY decisions I made -- I made my decisions with a full conscious, knowing the consequences and blessings to each outcome. I'm confident that I made the right choices, and I am really really happy where I'm at -- I'm totally experiencing just a taste of God's blessings through the past couple turbulant years, and I have absolutely no regrets about the past. Of course, I may feel sad about certain aspects of my situation, but that comes with territory. I would not trade any of what I have now, for anything else. I feel SO firmly about this -- if anyone ever pitied me on where I'm at in my life and what has happened to me, it means that they really don't understand my situation (or me) at all. I just hope that the example that Wayne and I have would help to encourage Priscilla and Enoch. I feel so bad for them -- no one deserves to go through what we went through...

Posted by Ruth at 11/05/2002