But it's all relative -
Even if you don't understand -
Well it's all understood -
Especially when you don't understand -
Then it's all just because -
Even if we don't understand -
Then lets all just believe
In an attempt to add additional structure to and glean more meaning from my life, I am going to try to start blogging some more. Here's what has been going on:
I have been interning with an organization called Daybreak in Santa Monica this semester to fulfill a requirement for my social work minor. I'm working with women who have mental illnesses and are homeless. Twice a week I get to drive what traffic makes into an hour of beauty on Pacific Coast Highway and spend the day working with these people. It has been a very growing experience so far and I would love to talk about it in person.
Campus ministry at Pepperdine took a leap of faith and transitioned this semester from our weekly corporate worship service of about 80 and split up into house groups of about 10, which meet in faculty's homes weekly for a meal and fellowship. In december 100 students signed up for 10 groups, and now there are 200+ students in 15 groups and still growing. The group that I am a part of has proved to be a really great outlet and source of encouragement. It really is special how broken literally EVERYone is and how powerful it can be to reveal that brokenness to perfect strangers and best friends alike.
I'm lucky to be a part of SGA again this year. I really just care about student government and am so glad it has been something that I have invested my life in at Pepperdine because I am getting to be a part of a few things that I think are really meaningful. People are starting to speculate (read: already stressing) about next year's positions, and it's a little exciting.
Sometimes I forget about classes. However, last semester I was in some core SOC classes and I seriously just LOVED them. Sociology is just so cool. This semester I only have classes twice a week so I seriously just don't think about them very much. I'm starting to think about grad school and getting my MSW which is very exciting.
Tonight we all pretended we were freshmen and went to the basketball game against Gonzaga, followed by in n out and diddy riese in Westwood. Good times. Except now it's 12:30 aka about an hour later than I usually go to bed these days. I'm just a grown up. I plan on posting things cooler than what I have just said, but as for now I'm just getting the ball rolling.
Sometime between July 15th and now, my life got crazy. I haven't blogged in so long that I almost forgot about it. Here is what has happened in the past two months:
In July our group went to Houston, and it was such a great experience. The Lord really taught us about unconditional love. We got to work with Patrick, one of my Pepperdine friends, who was interning at Impact in Houston. So so cool to see my HYG and Pepp worlds collide. I was so nervous about leading the trip that the night before, I literally made little 3x5 notecards/ cheat sheets about all the things I needed to be on top of for each day of the trip! Anyway, we made it and I felt like organization was definitely my number one strength that paid off. I got to know a lot of my youth group kids a lot better, which was awesome! They were and still are such an inspiration to me. One of our girls' grandfathers passed away during the week, and she had to fly home early. That was really sad, but she was such a trooper and I look up to her so much. Everyone was so supportive of each other all week and I really saw God using HYG as well as the kids in Houston.
The day after we got home from Houston, I taught class that morning and then that afternoon we had the annual photo scavenger, which is super fun but it was a joke because we were all just exhausted.
That week, we lost a friend. It is still super hard for me to write about it, and it feels so weird just inserting it into this blog as just something that happened in the past 2 months. Liz grew up at Highland with me, and was absolutely just the most angelic person I have ever known. We went to preschool together and our brothers' little kid basketball games together and later in high school we went on two mission trips to Paragould, AR and New Orleans (two of the most important weeks of my life) together. On her way from Memphis to Nashville, Liz was killed in a car accident. It was just terribly tragic and I don't know what else to say about it. God has shown us all signs of himself in all of this since then, but something like that, especially in the first few days, just hurts and makes me feel truly sad.
The next day, we had planned to go camping and white water rafting in Ocoee, TN. While it seemed so trivial after such a heavy week, I am glad we still went. It was a great chance to get away for a bit with the senior high kids and kind of unpack everything that was happening. It was one of the weirder situations I have ever been in to be grieving the death of my lifelong friend but also be a mentor and support to the kids in the youth group who had also known and loved her.
Before we knew it July was gone and it was August. We took a day mission trip to Paragould to help out at the children's home. I talked to a girl named Ainsley who I had met there in 2005. The only thing she remembered about our group was a precious girl named Liz who had given her testimony and talked about her family... nearly brought me and Thomas to tears. Pretty cool to be able to share that with our church family when we got home, though, and a powerful reminder that God used her life in big and important ways.
Just days later, Hannah my best friend from Pepperdine arrived in Memphis, the day after I ended my internship. I showed her around a bit and it was so cool to share my home and family with her.
They had a big intern goodbye party for me and Chet, which was a huge blessing and made me so so full of joy and gratitude that I got to be at Highland this summer, work with some of the best people I've ever known, and be a part of some teenagers' lives, and hopefully have said something that will stick with at least a few of them.
Best part of the summer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5EfFbpDoe4
Hannah and I drove cross-country to Malibu, which is a completely different blog post in and of itself, and I have been going full speed since then!
Here's to another blog post, maybe this weekend, that is more current.
So, on Saturday morning I am leaving for my Houston, TX mission trip, which I am in CHARGE of! Probably the biggest responsibility of my life. Pray for us, that God would use us, and that he would use to me to help our teenagers see how God is showing up in their lives and in their work. It's going to be awesome.
I started off by ignoring/delaying this prompt, because it is such a hard one! And then I got busy, and never ever did it. I am on day four of thirty and I started this like two months ago. Oops.
Paradise to me would be anywhere, preferably next to a body of water, where I would be surrounded by the people I love. It could be camping at a lake or in a little shack by the pacific ocean or a cute old house near the gulf. Or in the hills, like east tennessee or rwanda. Preferably a combination of all of the above. I would probably take naps in hammocks every day and eat chocolate covered strawberries. In my paradise I would be married to my best friend and giddy and in love. I would constantly be growing and learning. I would always feel so close to Jesus that my love for Him would give me butterflies in my stomach. Money wouldn't exist. It would be about 70 degrees, and October. I would work hard and play hard, and visit Africa and the Nile, and love it so much that I decided to move there, where my OTHER paradise would be living in a village there, and I would be fluent in the language, and be able to grow to love people who seem so different than me. Also, it could only be paradise to me if it were paradise to other people too, including global peace and more fairly distributed resources. Duh. I would have a job that I felt good at and that needed me. It might be a lot like hairy lemon island, in uganda:
(click on it to watch it on youtube for a better picture)
First of all, I feel like I could write a ten page blog every single day, but I just don't. I feel like such a whiney baby when I say I'm tired all the time, especially after visiting my friends in Teach for America training this weekend! What a JOKE! I've been home from camp for a week and a half, and it's so tempting to say that they have just been "normal" HYG weeks... but when you think about what we've been doing, they are so very far from being normal weeks! Last week was just a good week.
The previous Friday, we'd gotten home from camp. Sunday morning I had my 8th grade class, and taught about James out of chapter 3 about taming the tongue. Trying to illustrate how powerful the tongue/words can be, I asked them what the most meaningful thing people had said to them. One of them said that last summer, one of our seniors told her that she looked up to her (when she was in 7th grade). It's amazing how things like that stick with us! Anyway, I thought it was the best class that I've had so far. I am so self-aware and know when it's not going well and most of the time I hate it and am embarrassed but don't know how to recover. Then, most of the time I realize that maybe I am a little hard on myself and try to let it go. I pretty much just deny compliments that I don't agree with, too, which I guess is dumb. I try really hard not to give empty/made up words of affirmation because it makes the real ones more valuable...I guess I should take other people at their word, though. Either way, it went well that week. Also, out preacher opened his sermon that Sunday with a quote from Rodney Stark, a sociologist of religion that I know way too much about (I have blogged about him before...embarrassing) and met over the phone last semester! That was awesome because I was just sitting there trying not to look excited like a big soc nerd. That afternoon we had a Houston meeting and then went to Putt-putt. It was pretty fun just because I got to spend so much time with everyone!
Monday night I worked in the office, then hung out with Annaleigh (wonderful friend I grew up with in the youth group) and we watched the Bachelorette...obv. It was good that I spent the night with her because she lives closer to the church building, and I had to be there at 8 AM on Tuesday for Power Hour (our Memphis sidewalk VBS type activity). Can you believe that SIXTY FOUR teenagers showed up at our building at 8 AM to go serve inner city kids? It was a great morning. Usually we send out two groups: one to a day camp at Raleigh community church, and one to a neighborhood in Raleigh. The neighborhood group can be really frustrating, especially with 25 volunteers, when we try to round up kids, often only finding 3-5. The day camp is pretty consistent, though, and this week I went with the group that went there. It was fun and we at lunch at the mall afterward. After that, since I was already disgusto sweaty, I decided to go to the gym since it had been like 2 weeks, which was a gross amount of time since I had been going almost every day this summer! That was a good idea but maybe I should have just taken a nap. Tuesday night we had a Tuesday Night Devotional (TND) at Courtney's house. Would you believe that EIGHTY FIVE teenagers showed up at someone's house to worship God??? Thomas, who just graduated, spoke and did an amazing job.
Wednesday night we worked in the office and Chet spoke at class that night. He talked about John 14:6 (since our summer theme is, after all, "that's what Jesus said") and how Jesus is the way (the way out, the way in, the way through, etc.) he is such a gifted speaker and did an awesome job. On Thursday in the office we just worked on TIME trip (Houston) stuff. After work I went to Sarah Beth's house with the Stafford and Clemens twins and Mason and Kristen, and eventually we made our way to the movie theater with the Chadwell twins, Philip, Sarah, Allie, and a few others. We saw Toy Story 3. It was AMAZING! I pretty much just hate going to the movies, but I loved it and it was so much fun. Afterward, we kinda hadn't eaten dinner, and it was like 11 PM, so we went to Huey's, were "that" annoying group of teenagers, and had so much fun.
Instead of having Monday off like the rest of the world, our office was closed on Friday. I finally got to sleep in, and then that afternoon I drove about 2 hours down to the glorious city of Cleveland, Mississippi. Thiersten, who I went to Africa with last summer, and my good friend Blake are both down there currently, teaching and learning to be teachers, and will be teaching somewhere in the Mississippi Delta region for the next two years with TFA. I honestly cannot express how proud I am to know them. Saying the words "you are my hero" is just not enough. On Friday night Thiersten and I drove an hour to a movie theater (haha) and saw Grown Ups, aka the worst movie ever, the only good part was seeing Adam Sandler play basketball and knowing where he got his skills (he practices at Pepperdine).
Saturday we "explored" "downtown Cleveland" which was a joke but very cute and quaint. I never would have thought in a million years that I would be meeting up with Thiersten Rose in the middle of Mississippi. Especially since last summer in Uganda was the first place we had ever met, and then seeing each other in Malibu felt completely out of context, and then now here we were in the Mississippi. Those three places are just not normal places. Haha. It was great to see her though. So good to see Blake too! I'm so proud of him!!! On Saturday, he followed me back up to Memphis, and that night I got to hang out with him, Patrick, and Austin (and some other TFA people who came to Memphis for the weekend). Pat has such a great apartment downtown for hosting people, so that was fun. The best part was that Blake got to come see Highland on Sunday morning! For that matter, Patrick hadn't even seen our new building, and neither had Austin. I thought it would be a little much for them to sit in on my class, haha, so they went to the college class, but anyway, worship was great and Josh preached, and he is one of my favorite people ever. His sermon was so great that as soon as they post it on the website, I will share it. The four of us went to lunch with my parents afterward, and then it was "bye until next time."
This week has been similar to last week. Power Hour was great, TND was awesome (five teenagers shared verses and thoughts that have kept them connected to God since camp), and at class tonight Chet and I kind of tag teamed it. We talked about childlike faith and being imitators of God. He was great and I thought my part went ok. We went to get ice cream after though. Yay! Also, I got a text from Kaitlyn (Pepp friend), who just got home from Buenos Aires!! Yay!!! I miss my Pepperdine friends so much, and just can't get enough Zoey 101. I sometimes can't believe that I get to go back and live in Malibu again! Life is too good.
This job has been better than I could have imagined! Like I said, it can be so tiring, but it's weird because it's all fun stuff. It has pretty much consumed my life this summer. I expected that, because I've been around for a lot of HYG summers, and I really didn't expect to have a lot of time to hang out with people or pursue/resurrect my old high school friendships or go on dates or any of that. It has lived up to my expectations in that aspect. It's like all I do. I love it, but this weekend, driving down to MS and then coming back up and hanging out with the guys, was such a good escape! Being an "adult" figure obviously is teaching me many small lessons every second. You never think teachers or interns or youth ministers or parents or any people like that ever have any problems or issues of their own, outside of their job. It even kind of blew my mind when one of the DJs on FM100 the other morning said that on Valentine's Day of 2004, she found her boyfriend cheating on her in her bed with another girl. First of all, I agree with the other DJ that "who the hell cheats on Jill Bucko," and second of all, it just made her a real person to me for a sec, and that must have been absolutely HORRIBLE to have to go in to work the next morning and act like a normal person! What a joke! I mean, life is pretty smooth sailing for me right now, but when I am worried or concerned or discouraged or disheartened about something, I am so close to the youth groupers in age that I totalllly know that if I have a bad attitude, they are probably thinking, "why is she such a ...!?" because I have been that hypercritical teenager!! and sometimes still am! It's such a weird age. I have spent 99% of my time as a 20 year old basking in the coolness of the idea of maturity. It's such a strange and embarrassing place to be, but that's just me right now.
Another thing I am learning is that it's ok to be myself. This seems like such a little thing, especially from me, since after all I am known for saying "I...love myself!" in one of my speeches in COM 180 freshman year. Oops. But, I am JUST now learning that people will accept me for who I am! I feel like that line in Juno. "I try really hard, actually."
It's been so good though.
I am so sleeping right now. 1 and a half weeks til our group leaves for Houston, crazy! Time flies when...
Hannah, this made me think of you because both of us would have/did totally avoid participating it. But either way, totally a camp highland classic moment that I wanted to share.
