Friend Zone.

As I was heading to class this morning, I found myself glancing at the various pockets of students congregating among the campus, catching up from the weekend, savoring the cool air over coffee and providing company as they walked to class. It dawned on me that I am indeed currently friendless. I say this statement very loosely, because I do have friends just none that are local that I can call up to pal around with.  Honestly, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud as I thought about how absolutely true this is and also because I wouldn’t even know the first place to go to find friends.

SIDE NOTE: I am completely and totally more than satisfied and overjoyed with how my current situation is playing out. I am endlessly busy and always surrounded with people whom I love and care for deeply. So I am in no means complaining about the lack of love, enrichment and fun that spirals through my daily activities.

But with all of that said, I don’t have any girlfriends who live in the area and I spend 50% of my time with children/high school kids and the other 50% with family. And while I have everything I could ask for, I shamefully miss the company of a friend whom I can spend time, share and solve problems and grow to be life long friends with.

I don’t know if I’d even have time to hang out with friends between 2-year-old duty, soccer mom status, young life, bible study, school and all my other odd ends. Though the idea is VERY enticing.

Thought to be continued…

Misconception of a High Schooler: GREATEST INVENTION

I was fighting my way to the gym lobby yesterday afternoon when I came to the conclusion that teenagers are probably the weirdest inventions ever to walk the earth. It's a funny conclusion, seeing as I technically am still considered a "teenager." So maybe I'll redirect my conclusion to specifially high schoolers . Among them being the weirdest inventions- I'd have to also say they're the most awkward, unapproachable, and sometimes very smelly of all the other types of creatures that dance and sing and pass about love.

For one split second I was alone among the chaos and confusion that is Friday afternoon at 2:05- the clammer and excitement that erupts and drenches the halls and the tired, worn out faculty could almost be described as contagious. And for that split second I was taken back to how lonely, scared and unsure it felt to be a high schooler. To be 13 and entering a secondary school, or to be 14 and have your crush of two years spit gum in hair... to be 15 and have your first boyfriend break up with you... to be 16 and watch your parents marriage fall apart and feel numb as 17 enrolls you into your 3rd high school in 3 years- and all you can think about is how everything will change when you turn 18.

For the split second that the chaos of 2:05 overtook me I remembered how nothing changed the day I turned 18. And with that thought, I resurfaced to the smiling, excited and ever brave faces of the kids who I now call home. As they rushed through the crowds to grab me, smiling and calling my name it became so evident that high schoolers are the greatest, most daring and courageous inventions to ever walk the earth. And the day that changed everything, wasn't what I had ever that it would be. It was  the day Selma called me in for an interview, it was the day I boarded the charter bus headed for Lake Champion, it was then that everything changed.

I am so humbled, so grateful and ever confused as to why God thought it up that I'd get to live such a quirky adventure and be touched, inspired and loved by the greatest inventions that ever walked the earth.

My life now-

YoungLife- Falls Church High School

Moving Forward

I don’t remember much about my stepfather. Most of our conversations, family vacations and dinners over avocado salads have been forgotten. There are bits of him that sometimes sneak up on me though, like his cologne that drifted down our hallways or the way he’d bend down and say “tiny kiss.” I was 16 and the month of August was suffocating, more humid and relentless then most. My mums parent’s came to help us pack, we neatly folded 7 years and 5 months into cardboard boxes labeled FRAGILE. I scribbled over the FRAGILE markings on my boxes, there was nothing fragile about my life. Any part that could be broken was already rotten; I had no more need for fragile.

He left without a word, though his silence spoke louder than any sweet chord I had heard. I accepted his abandonment well; I told my family I never loved him anyway.

Three years passed and took hold of me quite violently, and throughout I feared I would never find the strength to resurface. Until a February morning pried the winter from my lips and broke the silence my step father had left me with. 

I dropped out of college in the middle of second semester, the very day silence no longer dwelled within me- I stumbled home to find the brokenness that had once lived in the tips my toes had burned through my blood like gasoline. And very clearly God whispered, it was time.

In the short months that passed, God revealed that I wasn't to lead a life that our society finds normal- my path to a "successful life" would be a very different one. Coming to terms with this realization spoiled me with anger and fear- I couldn't accept that I would be living at home, working and going to community college while my world of peers were at 4 year Universities, changing lives. Until God whispered once more and returning home, to the place I had always wanted to run from, made sense.

For those of you who have spoken to me in the last year have probably heard about my friend Aaron and the struggle he has gone through. As well as my special interest and love for him. If you haven't  you can check out these two videos- the first is purely information and the second was a video I made for Aaron in January, that he has yet to see. Both, I would say, are very touching.  

Aaron

I believe

Anyways, one warm May evening I got a call from Aaron's mum saying that Aaron had begun to walk- on his own. A task no doctor could have ever imagined, let alone his family or friends. The news crashed over me and engulfed me in the deepest reassurance that accepting the path God had spoken for me, no longer felt like a burden. Because from the moment I saw Aaron, I knew he would walk again, I KNOW he will speak again- and watching the power of believing and loving someone literally excite them enough they find the courage and healing to WALK, simply blew me and my mind away. God is good, so, so good.

All this to be said, it has been a year since I was sprawled out writing among the stacks in the basement of my University's library. Blissfully unaware of where it was my dreams were about to take me and what great lengths I would have to travel to cease them. But now that I am in the thick of actively seeking and challenging my purpose, dreams and God- I couldn't be more at peace with the path I took to get here and the path I'll continue on.