Taxes, leather briefcase, slurping coffee grounds out of a faded travel mug. Bitchy bosses and long meetings. Cubicles. A framed picture of the family propped up next to a bowl of peppermints. Working 12-hour days and coming home grumpy. Trying to remember anniversaries. Signing forms, paying bills, waiting for Friday to come around. Armchair with food crumbs and Kool-Aid stains. Listening to screeching violin practicing after an annoying day at the office. Trying to get on the treadmill every once in a while. Weight Watchers frozen dinners. Reluctantly giving up a few minutes of peace and quiet for a neighborhood barbecue.

Minivan with a “I love my honor student” bumper sticker, corny “Parent MVP” tee shirt from the middle daughter’s elementary school band fundraiser. PTA meetings, community bake sales, watching the little one’s painfully terrible soccer games. Helping the oldest settle into his first day of middle school. Getting concerned calls from English teachers–”your son’s poetry was distressing.” Cooking soupy casseroles, staying up late finishing laundry, phone ringing constantly. Homeowner’s association, chit-chat with the neighbors. Mopping up vomit, trips to the doctor, band-aids, tissues, cough syrup.

Adulthood.

How much would I give up in order to glorify God?

This is the question I’ve been wondering about. All throughout the summer, I will be destroying my comfort zone. No, not just leaving it–but destroying it. If I am at the bank of a creek, and these next few months are about using stepping stones to get across, the stepping stones are becoming smaller and further apart. I fear I will fall in.

It started with VBS. Working directly with children. That was uncomfortable, but I did it. I got through one week, and I will get through the others. I’m not terrible with kids, as I previously thought. I gave up some of my comfort to help glorify God. Next is camp. I’ll be working at an overnight camp in August. That’s unnerving for me. I won’t have the luxury of my own bed after a long day like I can have after the few hours I work at VBS.

Finally, the mission trip. I’ll be departing on Sunday for five days. I might just bag out on this one. I’ll be so out of my element that I’m not sure I’ll be able to take it. Why:
First off, none of my closest friends were able to come. Even within my own youth group, I’ll be with people I don’t know as well. In addition, we’ll be working with other youth groups. That’s not something I’ve done on the previous four times I’ve been on a mission trip. We’re even going to a completely different place this time–so I’m completely clueless! Even worse, we’ll have to be sharing quarters with other youth groups because of space. There will be no AC. We have to bring bathing suits, because the showers won’t have stalls. All of this combined is terribly overwhelming for me. I feel like I’ll be lost. Less familiarity. Fewer amenities. Less privacy.

Allow me to go on a tangent. My privacy is actually important to me. People closest to me tend to overlook this. Because around my most cherished friends, I’m exuberant. Lively, talkative, full of ideas. I guess they assume I’m always like that. But what they don’t understand is that after being with them, I can go home and sit on the corner of my couch with my computer. What they don’t understand is that being with them is the exception to the rule. I’m not exuberant around those not close to me. I’m not “illumined” by those not close to me. On this trip, I’m going to be surrounded by new people, new places, and new tasks. I’ll need my space to get away from it all, especially in such a scary and exhausting situation, but I don’t think I can get that there. Continue reading →

Today, I walked out of my high school for the last time as a sophomore. Usually, I slip out a side exit to walk home more quickly, but I left through the main door today. For the drama. I will never forget how it felt to thrust my hands against that door, push it open, walk into the thick summer heat. I will never forget how it felt to walk by the rocks at the front of the school, intentionally between the second and third smallest. I will never forget stopping, looking back on the campus, and sprinting back to my house. I will never forget this past year.

As a freshman, I received straight A’s. I got good grades, put forth my (sort of) best effort, and did what I was told. I generated work like a factory. That’s what most students wish for–those high percentages necessary to get into a good school. I did not achieve those high percentages this year. My grades weren’t God-awful–I passed all my classes with better than D’s–but they weren’t anything to write home about, and I just wasn’t the student I once was. In fact, if my freshman self could have met my sophomore self, she would have been shocked. How dare I miss half my homework assignments? How dare I drag myself into school ten minutes late every morning? How dare I doze off during my first classes? She would have been horrified.

Maybe it’s true. I have been a bit horrific. A lazy, tardy, woolgathering slob with a slight disregard for mindless authority. But in letting myself go, I lit up a whole new part of me that I thought was only drenched wood. On required reflections, I turned in the truth. I went against the grain. I voiced my opinions and let my wittiness shine through. I was honest and open, with genuineness gracing everything I wrote. I made impromptu motivational speeches to my class. I went out of my way to uplift and inspire. When I read through all my yearbook signatures this evening, I began to tear up. The blank pages were covered not in scrawled have-a-great-summers, but in paragraphs. Paragraphs thanking me for my optimism, creativity, and loving personality. Paragraphs written by students, telling me that I have made a difference in their life and changed their worldview. Paragraphs written by teachers, telling me that I have inspired them. Paragraphs reminding me of my own worth and value. Paragraphs thanking me for being me.

I have done something this year, something far more important than my homework. I have done what seemed impossible before. When I open my yearbook and see those beautiful paragraphs, when I reflect on the positive imprints I have made on the hearts of others–I I realize that those are my final marks.

Those are the marks that count.