Such exhilaration

It's amazing the difference one phone call can make. Over the past 24 hours, such a difference in my perspective. I finished my second full week of classes, turning in my first two homework sets for classes and graded my first set of homework. For a few days I didn't think everything was going to get done, I didn't know if I was actually able to do it, but I did. I figured out the math, I was determined in my time management, and it all happened. To think this entire year will be like that, I will definitely be tired ;), but will learn a lot. Every time I start thinking that something isn't right, I get that feeling of excitement when I understand a concept or see a new theorem or solve a problem I had no idea about. That can't be normal, I figure, so I just need to hold on to that excitement.
Plus I just got off the phone, and I feel like I have a new mission. I finally have a way to serve the Baha'i community here, and I'm so excited. I've been here almost a month now, and I was floundering, not knowing what to do. After talking to the Auxiliary Board member though, now I feel like I have something that I can do, some way I can be of service. There are so many exciting things happening that I want to be a part of them. I need that area of my life to be signficant; otherwise I don't have a center. I'm so used to the Baha'i community being my family, my origin, and my support, that it's been a difficult few weeks without that. I'm used to being able to be able to share faith with my friends. There are so few people here though that have some sort of spiritual belief in their lives. I will find them. Slowly but surely, it can be there.
I feel such a relief and excitement about the coming years. And I know where to start, which always helps.
I have this story stuck in my mind that I heard sung a few days ago, a recording that I have of a passage from the Seven Valleys by Baha'u'llah, about a lover who has lost his beloved and life loses meaning for him. One day he goes to the market and a watchman starts following him. The lover starts running and more watchmen are following him and he cries out and curses them and doesn't understand why he is being chased. They chase him to a wall which he climbs "with untold pain" and falls into the garden below, where he sees his beloved. After realizing these watchment have chased him to his beloved, he blesses them for sending him there. I feel like these past few weeks, I've been chased... I don't really know why, but I do know there must be some reason, and I'm just going to keep running and climbing, and I feel like something is so close... We'll see what happens. Even though it's hard, and I feel like I'm searching for something that might not be there, I'll keep looking and keep trying.
To be a constant source of love. It's one of my favorite quotations that I keep meaning to memorize. We, as believers of God, are to be a source of love. So that's what I'm going to strive to do.