Hello, remember me?

I have begun countless posts, yet could follow through with none. My guilt of my absence stood between my finger and the "publish post" button. It has been longer than I ever hoped it would be. Alas, summer has inspired me to break down that guilt and begin once again to fill you in on the joys and happens of the world that surrounds me. The following may seem broken and in disconnect because of my attempt to fill you in on the last three months and the current state of my heart.

I'll brief you quickly on the end of the school year, but will only mention what I feel is necessary so that this won't get overly long for all of you that like to enjoy your summers days reading something beside my ramblings :) Much as the beginning of my year, the end came so unexpectedly. I found myself sad, but not mourning the loss of my students as I had last year. Which I have come to an understanding about and a sense of contentment. My team of teachers will be changing next year and I found my heart more burdened for that. As most of you realize by now, change is not exactly my forte. I deny, fight, and struggle to the end until it has inevitably run its course and I'm left to deal with it. As I recognize this, I understand it is a change (ironic?) in my perspective that I need to develop. I'll continue to work on that. Along with the change that would happen with my coworkers, I knew that the summer blues were once again around the corner. As crazy as it may seem, I hate the summer. It's not the warm weather, beaches, and tans that I hate. I find myself desiring the hands-on interaction and investment I have the other 9 months of the year. I feel as though I have to take a time-out from what I believe is my purpose for the moment. When realizing this, I attempted to find outlets to maintain a sense of investment during the summer so this feeling that I dreaded could not drown out the sun and barbecues that were quickly approaching. I found nothing. Ideas were plentiful, but as opportunities presented themselves, doors were closed tight. It was then that I began to pray for open doors and opportunities for investment that I so desired. God not only provided one for the summer, but within the next 2 weeks after that prayer. A friend who is a youth pastor was in need of an extra female trip leader for a soon-to-be-freshmen mission trip to Kansas City. I think we were both surprised that my reply was "yes."

My one problem was that I started graduate school the week before I left. This meant that all my assignments for the following week of my trip needed to be completed before I departed. Yikes. I had no idea what that all encompassed, but by 3am most nights leading up to the trip--I was awakened to that reality. With grad school behind me, I drove up to their church, attended their service, and hopped one of the 15 passenger vans to begin our drive south to Kansas City. I knew one person out of the 22 on the trip, but quickly felt as though I had been apart of their community for years. I love when you feel as though you are exactly where you are supposed to be, which doesn't always happen for me all that often. But for that week, for those 6 days, I felt that. I felt the purpose in my presence, along with the presence of those middle school students in my life. It was a Youth Works trip, so most everything was planned in advance for us. We stayed at a church with a few other churches. During the week, we split into separate groups to do various service ministries in the community. In the evenings we had worship, speaker, and processing time. Through this week, God affirmed me in my pursuit of my degree in counseling. He affirmed me in His grace. He affirmed me with the surrounding of middle school students. Who knew such peace could be found in a room full of crazy 14 year old students.

In fear that I could write for pages more, I will leave you with a few funny stories in the past months. Know that the consistency of my writing will improve greatly in the following days and weeks.

School:

On the last day of school, we had an all-school carnival day. Not your typical carnival, but one with a football and track area filled with various games and inflatables. Now, imagine if you will, the bleachers filled with 500-600 middle school students. I am standing in the middle of the field with the majority of the staff members. My team, four 7th grade teachers, are in charge of the field goal kicking station. They felt as though it would be a good idea for me to demonstrate how to kick a field goal. Brilliant, right? Pretending to be the best kicker my students have ever seen, I demonstrated. And failed. I then became the field-goal-kicker-holder-person. Another coworker quickly demonstrated the correct way to kick and had a brave soul from the stands to help start off the day. Again, 500-600 students are all watching this. The kid struts down to the field and steps back to begin his approach. I so badly want to close my eyes, fearing my poor finger will be the cost of the boy's confidence. Although I don't, now wishing I had. As the boy runs forward and is inches away from kicking, he stops (afterward, I find out he didn't feel he had taken the appropriate number of steps backward). As he stops, his kneecap--at my eye level--pops audibly and goes behind his knee. What do I do you ask? What any respectable teacher would do in front of the entire school, I instantaneously throw up on the poor boy. I wish I was kidding. When the paramedics arrived, they were concerned he had thrown up from the pain. My coworkers were quick to assure them that it was just his teacher that had thrown up on him. Humiliation? Unavoidably so.

Kansas City:

On our service projects for the week, I was paired with a youth pastor from the group I came with and 4 girls from our church...including a leader from a different church and 4 kids from their youth group. At one of the homes, we were helping an elderly lady clean up her backyard and organize things inside her home. Her backyard and home were beautiful, but had just gone without attention and care. She described it as her "pride and joy" in life and was saddened at the state it was in. For inspiration, we went and got the kids slushies on this hot day and explained how sad it was that this lady was all alone and had no one to help her clean this up. We continued to spur them on in encouragement at the service they were doing for her. As the day went on, I stopped in to see how some of the girls inside were doing. One girl asked the lady if her husband was awake yet. I froze. I never realized that they didn't understand that her husband was not living (at least that was our understanding). I tried to give her the "mother-warning" eyes, but you must not truly have that look until you are a mother because it didn't work. I held my breath as I awaited the lady's response. That was, until the bathroom door opened. Out walked her husband. I was stunned. My girls quickly turned away as I was still trying to process that this man was alive. However, seconds after that realization...I realized something else. He was naked, head to toe. He was equally surprised to see us and within seconds (which seemed like minutes) he fled to his room. I quickly made my exit, assuming the girls were doing just fine without me.