I've had a lot of downtime these past few days. It's been nice to do nothing for more than ten minutes. I don't think I could tell you the last time that I was able to just be. In my Dallas life, I go roughly a million miles an hour, every day, all of the time. This past weekend? I sat by a river, switching between shade and sun, and did nothing. Literally, nothing. For three hours. I am going to miss this pace of life, a pace where you have a list of things to do, but first, you need to drink a hot chocolate. Because, priorities.
In between periods of nothing, I've been doing a lot of praying and a lot of thinking. When I lead our debrief, we go through how to share the details of the summer trips - what God did, what you experienced, things you want to tell people. There are three different "levels" to sharing these stories: the thirty second version, the three minute version, and the thirty minute version. As I have been debriefing myself and sorting though all of my stories, I have found myself unable to formulate something of a thirty second version or even a three minute version. The closest that I have come to is a one word answer: different.
Different isn't bad. Different isn't negative. Different isn't even good. It's...different. Much of the trip was the same as it is every year: we competed in meets; we shared our stories with new friends and old; we had our regularly scheduled team time (where, I'm pretty sure that I can say that the Lord deepened each of our relationships with Him); we ate a lot of waffles and ice cream; we stayed up late chatting about things of varying levels of depth; we made daily trips to the grocery store. But this year, everything felt different.
So now continues the journey of me trying to formulate an answer that can be used in those situations where people ask, "How was the trip!?" but they only have (or are willing to give) a few seconds because the question they asked wasn't a genuine question, but more of a greeting and an acknowledgement of you. Much like the "Hey, how are you?" that we do so often in America. Squirrel moment: That is the nice thing about coming over here - greetings are greetings, so when you hear that question, people are genuinely wanting to hear how you are doing. I can see why people coming into American culture have a tough time getting used to it.
Back on topic. There really isn't a point to this blog post; I just needed to start processing outside of myself. Maybe I'm not supposed to have a shorter version of this summer to share. Maybe I'm supposed to just give long, detailed answers, full of stories about His provision. Because "different" isn't a description that you usually hear. And I shouldn't be trying to fit this trip into a box that I don't have for it. That seems to be a continuing lesson in my world right now - stop trying to put new things in old boxes. They won't fit and they're not supposed to fit. Square peg, round hole.
Welcome to my stream of consciousness.
In between periods of nothing, I've been doing a lot of praying and a lot of thinking. When I lead our debrief, we go through how to share the details of the summer trips - what God did, what you experienced, things you want to tell people. There are three different "levels" to sharing these stories: the thirty second version, the three minute version, and the thirty minute version. As I have been debriefing myself and sorting though all of my stories, I have found myself unable to formulate something of a thirty second version or even a three minute version. The closest that I have come to is a one word answer: different.
Different isn't bad. Different isn't negative. Different isn't even good. It's...different. Much of the trip was the same as it is every year: we competed in meets; we shared our stories with new friends and old; we had our regularly scheduled team time (where, I'm pretty sure that I can say that the Lord deepened each of our relationships with Him); we ate a lot of waffles and ice cream; we stayed up late chatting about things of varying levels of depth; we made daily trips to the grocery store. But this year, everything felt different.
So now continues the journey of me trying to formulate an answer that can be used in those situations where people ask, "How was the trip!?" but they only have (or are willing to give) a few seconds because the question they asked wasn't a genuine question, but more of a greeting and an acknowledgement of you. Much like the "Hey, how are you?" that we do so often in America. Squirrel moment: That is the nice thing about coming over here - greetings are greetings, so when you hear that question, people are genuinely wanting to hear how you are doing. I can see why people coming into American culture have a tough time getting used to it.
Back on topic. There really isn't a point to this blog post; I just needed to start processing outside of myself. Maybe I'm not supposed to have a shorter version of this summer to share. Maybe I'm supposed to just give long, detailed answers, full of stories about His provision. Because "different" isn't a description that you usually hear. And I shouldn't be trying to fit this trip into a box that I don't have for it. That seems to be a continuing lesson in my world right now - stop trying to put new things in old boxes. They won't fit and they're not supposed to fit. Square peg, round hole.
Welcome to my stream of consciousness.
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