green grass grows all around

Tonight is officially the first night of my third semester at Arkansas Tech University.
I haven't even been back here a day, and I'm already seeing how different this year is going to be from the previous one.

Yesterday, I came back a day early for an Age to Age ministry team (aka committee) meeting, and I realized just how much I had committed to. For the first time, I really thought about what those kids are dealing with, and what Age to Age does for them. Heck, for the first time, I thought about the kids, and not myself. It's a new perspective, focusing on others: you'd be surprised how much more the world you can see after you've started to deflate your head.

Which brings me to where I am now...seven feet above my dorm floor on a top bunk, above roommate #1, and across from roommate #2. You must understand that this is a sacrifice for me. I am not a fan of near-death experiences everytime I want to relax. But you know what I'm learning? The world isn't about what I'm not a fan of.

Last semester, I basically lived without a roommate, so I basically had an entire room to myself in the nicest suite-styled dorm on campus. This semester, I'm living with two other girls in the oldest dorm on campus. We all have different personality types, music preferences, schedules, and activities. Moving in today was so hard for me. I have way less space this year. In fact, I really don't have any space of my own. But again, I finally just realized that this world isn't about me and my space and my bed and my picture frames. The hours I spent organizing and perfecting what space I've claimed as my own could have been spent meeting the girls on my hall, and building relationships with terrified and/or overly confident freshman. I'm having to re-learn all the rules you learn in preschool...
Be considerate.
Share with others.
The world doesn't revolve around you.

Last year I stuggled with lonliness in a room all by myself.
Is the grass greener on the other side? Yes.
Thank you, God, for giving two amazing roommates, and a bed suspended in the clouds.
Thank for testing me in this area, because I know it is an opportunity to stretch, to grow, and to be humbled.

2,972

2,972. That's the population of my hometown.

I memorized the number when I was in about the 9th grade, because when I said "small town," some people just didn't fully understand. I'm sure I've ranted about my town on here before, but it's time to do it again. I don't hate England. But there comes a point to where a person's "home" is no longer where they feel the most at home. 1

I returned to England, Arkansas last week to find that a large handful of my high school classmates were now happily married to other of my high school classmates. I am not surprised by this, because it happens to everyone, and I knew it was coming soon. What's surprising is that they found love among the 2,972. I'm slightly jealous. 2

I have also realized that England no longer holds anything for me. My parents and grandfather. And Charlotte's Eats and Sweets (which technically isn't even in England)3. That's about it. My friends have all gone on and made new lives just like I have. They have no need to return to England either. I no longer have any close association with anyone at the high school, so there's really no point in returning for football games and graduations.

I'm not trying to evoke blasphamy on my town. It's just that, well, it's no longer my town. I've been here a week, and a week too long. I surely can't wait to return to Russellville on Sunday...it contains a Wal-mart. Oh, and my life.


1 A good sign of this is when you prefer your rock-solid camp mattress to the large bed you've slept in the majority of your life.
2 Nah...
3 Charlotte's Eats and Sweets, God's gift to Arkansas. If you haven't eaten there, please do, and order a Keo Klassic, so that your life will be made complete.

Camper Dream Fulfilled

I guess I'm having withdraws.

Every time I sleep, my subconcious mind assumes that I am surrounded by children.
Example 1: My first night home, I sat up and started teaching an activity in my sleep.
Example 2: At 4:00 this morning, my parents told me to come downstairs because the tornado siren had gone off. In my mind I told "the girls" to start rounding up their things and to follow me downstairs.
Example 3: When I woke up from a long nap this afternoon, my immediate thoughts were, "oh no. They're going to think I got sick, too, and send them back without a senior counselor. I'm not sick! Don't worry, girls, I'll be there soon!" My mom had to convince me that there was in fact no one in the house besides the two of us, and that they had not come to my house to complete a 9th session.

No one else sleeps in the same room as me.
There are not numerous 9-15 year olds around my bedroom. Just me.
Camp is over.

I'm not sad, just surprised. The past 2 months were the longest, hardest, funnest, shortest, and best 9 weeks of my life. I grew and learned so much this summer. At the very beginning of the summer, I struggled with wanting to be at camp. I remember thinking, 'I need my life back.' But, a mere two weeks later, my new motto was, 'This IS my life.'

God did amazing things this summer (despite the craziness of Camp 8--campers and counselors were dropping like flies due to...flu? Plus, it rained literally every day. Longest week of my life.). Hundreds of kids came to know Jesus for the first time, and thousands made the decision to get right with God and start living for him again. Kids loved and looked up to me, and I still find it hard to believe the amount of influence I had over them. Girls told me that I changed their lives. Seriously? God used me to impart wisdom into the lives of hundreds of young people. Whoa. Camper dream fulfilled.

This summer was truly amazing, but I don't feel like my work at Brookhill is quite done yet. I feel like God wants me there at least one more summer. I suppose we'll find out.

I thank Jesus Christ our Lord, who has given me the opportunity to do his work. He considered me trustworthy and appointed me to serve him.
1 Timothy 1:12

incomplete sentences.

Home from camp for 40-ish hours.
Tired.
Appears that life outside of camp does exist after all. Who knew?

Part of me wants to delete this blog. I've made it too personal.
Part of me wants to delete large chunks of my facebook for similar reasons.
Probably should do these things.
Too lazy.

2 weeks of camp left.
Bittersweet.

amen.

erasing

"Sometimes I try to erase myself. I imagine a big pink soft soap eraser, and it's going back and forth, back and forth, and it starts down at my toes, back and forth, back and forth, and there they go--poof!--my toes are gone. And then my feet. And then my ankles. But that's the easy part. The hard part is erasing my senses--my eyes, my ears, my my nose, my tongue. And last to go is my brain. My thoughts, memories, all the voices inside my head. That's the hardest, erasing my thoughts. And then, if I've done a good job, I'm erased. I'm gone. I'm nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl."

"And...I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I'm not outside my world anymore, and I'm not really inside it either. The thing is, there's no difference anymore between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me."

-Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

I read this book when I was 13 years old.
Nearly seven years later, I find myself pulling out that giant pink eraser, and I let it remove every inch of me, until nothing of myself remains.

Sigh.

I wish I would stop wasting my mornings by sleeping in.

these days

What's this life anyway?
What's it to you and me?
What's it to anyone?
Who are we supposed to be?
Make me a storybook
Write me away from here
I need a different now

Where we can wear each other for awhile
I'll lend you my tears if I could borrow a smile
I'll get through tomorrow somehow today
Happy After...Once upon these days

There's four roads to anywhere
Four ways to everything
We were unbreakable
We spoke our destiny
Let's take a moment out
Go were we never go
Let's make a new world now

Where we can wear each other for awhile
I'll lend you my tears if I could borrow your smile
We'll get through tomorrow somehow today
Happy After...Once upon these days

Then one day we'll find
when we're looking back at this time
Wondering how we've come so far from this
When we close our eyes

What's this life anyway?
What's it to you and me?
What are we doing here?
Who are we supposed to be?
I'll take a better world
I'll take anything
I'll take our little world now

Where we can wear each other for awhile
I'll lend you my tears if I could borrow your smile
We'll get through tomorrow somehow today
Happy After...Once upon these days

-Chantal Kreviazuk