Today has been one of those days. One of those days I wish I could have turned off my heart so I didn't have to feel. Didn't have to have sympathy pains for the heartbreak my dear friends are feeling as they leave the most incredible ten weeks of their lives. Didn't have to feel old scars being opened as I pined for my brothers and sisters from last summer. Didn't have to feel the dread of leaving behind everything and everyone I know in a week.
I felt the Lord leading me today to write a message to the girls I discipled and give them advice on how to cope with going home. I know it sounds silly. It's hard to explain. Yes, there is real pain going on in the world right now. Famine. Corruption. Even on our own soil, unemployment and homelessness and such. But to those 38 students, it is hard to look past the fact that their world has been turned upside down for ten weeks straight and all they could do was hold on to they only thing they had- each other.
I stole this from the blog of one of the students I was really close to- Ashton. She worked in the Emporium (just like me) and was the Associate Project Director when the staff left (just like me). She is a beautiful writer and sums it up better than I could-
I could say that leaving will be bittersweet, that I’ve loved my time here but I’m ready to go home, but that would be a lie. I honestly don’t feel like I could ever be ready to leave. I have come to know and love the people here in an environment that is so cultivating to deep friendship. I have had so many experiences that I can try and explain but at the end of the day, people back home will never understand. I’m blessed beyond measure to be going back to a community that loves the Lord and will be able to relate to me on many levels, but no one except the 38 other people God brought together this summer will ever truly “get it.”
These people understand when I use words like “bumpout,” “termed,” or “utili-doors.” They will understand my relationship with Stephen completely, no matter what happens. They identify with stories of insane guest behavior and not blink an eye when I point with two fingers instead of one.
But more than that, they understand what this summer has meant to me. They have walked alongside me as God revealed to us our weaknesses, struggles, fears and strengths. We have been fed up with each other, in love with each other, in awe of each other, and unworthy of each other. We have felt true exhaustion together. We have felt true joy together. We have learned (slowly, and still a lesson in progress) to rely on God’s strength and not our own. We have found our voices, broken down our walls, and fought for each other on daily battlefields.
Going on summer project is like eating hamburgers your whole life and then spending ten weeks eating steak. Some moments are hard to chew, but there are so many nights of eating the most tender filet mignon. Imagine then going back to burgers every night. You don't go hungry, but for the first time, you know something better is out there. So you search and you search until you find something else that satisfies.
This is one of my favorite photos from last summer. Our last night of project, walking to the beach at the Polynesian resort to watch the fireworks one last time... Sarah P, Jess, Alexis, Patreeya, and me
I have to admit, there may have been this miniscule part of me that selfishly returned to WDWSP because I was still searching for my filet. I wish I could sit here and tell you that every reason I had for going back was selfless. But it wasn't. I missed the fun, the thrill, the excitement of living by faith every day. But there is no reason why I couldn't have created those moments for myself every day. I told my girls tonight that they need to live every day like they are still on WDWSP11, not every day wishing they were still there. Thats what I did for a lot of this last year. And like I talked about a few posts ago, it wasn't the same. I still was tasting some gourmet meals that were way better than hamburgers, but they were different.
I am reading an incredible book right now called Prodigal God, and I just read a section about our search for home. You see, last summer was the first time I truly felt... known. The people closest to me heard my deepest, darkest secrets. In what was probably the deepest and truest expression of grace I have ever seen, they did not run away. On the contrary, they extended a hand to me and invited me to walk alongside of them despite my failures, my fears, my imperfections. I felt at home, maybe for the first time in my life. I truly believe that in those moments last summer and this summer as well, I caught a glimpse of heaven. Not the cheesy, riding on a cloud with gold wings heaven. The sense of perfect community kind. But it was temporary, as is everything in this life. And for months, instead of finding my home somewhere else, I mourned the loss of home. So I went searching, expecting to be provided of it instead of seeking to create it amongst those who hadn't caught that glimpse that I did. I feel like I somehow robbed my loved ones of this opportunity to experience what I felt, and I have spent a lot of today trying to come to terms with that. Thank goodness for grace and the intercession of God for my failures.
Please don't misunderstand me. This year was incredible. I NEVER would have survived it without the experiences I had last summer. Especially by the end of the year I was finding brief instances of that community again. But I wasted a lot of time grieving the home I had lost, searching for it wherever I could. The first time I went to Orlando this past year, I sobbed my eyes out, longing for the companionship of any single one of the people I shared my life with last year. I didn't care if it was Alexis, the sister I shared my bed and my deepest fears with, or Josh, who I shared maybe one conversation with. I craved it. I went looking for it back at work. I worked a 8 or 9 Emporium shifts over the last year and only left missing Tim and Jamie and Erica more than ever.
In Prodigal God, Tim Keller quotes one of C.S. Lewis' most famous sermons (yes, C.S. Lewis did not just write the Narnia books, he was one of the most prominent Christian theologians of the last century)-
"Our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation"
Tim Keller responds by saying
"We are all exiles, always longing for home. We are always traveling, never arriving. The houses and families we actually inhabit are only inns along the way, but they aren't home. Home continues to evade us"
Home is a pretty big deal for me. I suppose this is because the things that a home represents- security, stability, community... those are the things I want the most. The things that combat my deepest fears, those vividly human fears of being alone and unprotected. Over the last four years, home has been in many places. Even now, I really do consider Gainesville my home. This house I sit in? The one I have lived in since I was 12 that is two miles away from the one I was born in? This is where my parents live. But its a home. So is the house I lived in the last three years in Gainesville. (I wouldn't call Beaty Towers a home... that will never be more than a roach infested dorm that I happened to sleep in (most of the time) for a year). Mike Ditka resort? That is home too. And shortly, hopefully, St. Louis will be home too.
I am not a big fan of corny cliche catch phrases. But there is one that has been in my mind. It usually refers to a breakup, but it applies here. "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened" SOOO CHEEEESYYY. But it works.
I will leave you with the last lyric of my current favorite song.
Lifted out of the ashes, I find hope in the aftermath.
Kelly
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