Am Erstens

I thought I'd keep a blog during the time I'll be spending in Regensburg next year, all being well. It's now 9 days until I fly from Edinburgh to Munich - I can't believe that! I'm excited - it'll be the first time I've been abroad for more than a week, I'll have a chance to get to know Regensburg quite well I hope, and it seems a very pretty place. But right now, I don't really feel prepared: although I've been one of the most fortunate in my class in securing accommodation in good time, close to the university and at a very reasonable rate at that, and the group I'm going to work with seem to have everything well in hand for my time with them, and I even have a friend willing to pick me up at the airport in Munich...I don't feel very ready. What else can I do to feel more ready? I've done a lot of reading for the project, and I have some German which is now quite patchy but it's very likely that those I'll be working and living with will have good English - I suppose I could be doing more reading and German practice, and I plan to in these last days.

But there's a feeling of being unprepared that I can't rectify by reading books. I'm finding it hard to imagine being on my own; my most negative thoughts are trying to convince me that I'm not mature enough to be doing this, to be visiting a foreign country on my own and presenting myself as a capable, useful addition to a research team. But it doesn't pay to dwell on these thoughts, at all. I've a bad habit of trying to anticipate situations in as much detail as I can, whether I expect them to be good or bad. Lately, I've both imagined the good and the bad which I'll encounter in Regensburg, and it's the latter that makes me feel unprepared. I'm so looking forward to being there, and imagining the interesting things I could see and do - but then, I worry about whether I'll get on ok in the lab, in my work and with others.

Instead of this, I ought to appreciate that I can't realistically imagine what my stay in Germany is going to hold, and look forward in raw anticipation, trusting that God will be with me in everything and that His reality is so much greater than anything I could have imagined - what an opportunity this is when I must fully trust Him, or how easy I have found it here to trust in other things to give security and reassurance, without acknowledging that I have been doing that!