The Magnolia Barber Shop.

Spontaneity is one of my favorite parts of life, and it runs rampant here at college, at least in my house it does. Our most recent endeavor is the opening of the Magnolia Barber Shop. A not-for-profit charity hair cutting studio we run out of the kitchen in the basement. We provide hair cuts to broke college students who need to shed their dead ends but don't have a budget that allows a fancy salon trip.

I really hope that made you laugh because it sure made me. The real story is my roommate Emily is relatively skilled at cutting hair so she sits crazy girls who spontaneously want to cut their hair off at the kitchen table and armed with a pair of school scissors off goes the hair. Just like that you're a new, dead end free person and haven't spent a dime. That's just kind of how we do things here at Magnolia. We're all about adventure and craziness 'round here.

Tonight's client in the barber shop? Me. 3ish inches off my hair. Love this house and love the crazy spontaneity of college.

 

Also my hair is kind of gone. Yay college!

Adventures in Leading: Bracelets.

Leading YoungLife in college is hard. Leading WyldLife in Floyd County is even harder. This week we were tasked as a leadership by our area director to come prepared with a "personal victory" we'd had one on one with a kid this week, and honestly I had no idea what that meant. I'm still fairly new in the whole leading and knowing girls thing and being 45 minutes away sure doesn't help with the getting to know girls on a regular basis thing.

Something really funny about the 6th grade girls I've been sitting with at lunch is that they are fascinated by my bracelets. Every time they see me they proudly recite "That one's from Winter Sun, that one's from Germany, the antler's from Norway and your watch is from the Target in Christiansburg!" I don't really know why they're so intrigued by a bunch of intricate yarn, but they are and it always gives me a nice chuckle.

I've really been struggling with feeling like I haven't been connecting with the girls that much. That I'm just some semi cool older person that comes to lunch a few days a week and that all that means is that they're allowed to talk during the silent part of lunch. That our relationship was just whatever in their eyes. But this week at lunch, bracelets changed that idea.

My teammate Sarah and I sat down with our regular table of girls and one of them very excitedly very excited searched through her lunch box proclaiming "I made something for you guys!!!" She pulled out two of those little rubber band bracelets that are super in right now with the tween girls. If you hadn't guessed already - I love bracelets. Also I love gifts, totally one of my love languages. It's crazy to me how something as small as having a little 6th grade girl hand you a silly little bracelet can have to much impact and be such a confirmation that even when I feel like I'm failing at being a leader the Lord is still on my side and working in little ways that I don't even know.

Rejoice in the small things my friends!

Adventures in Leading: Rec Basketball

One of my absolute favorite things about leading WyldLife is rec sports. It seems like basically every girl I meet plays some sort of a rec sport or another constantly throughout the year (probably cause there's not much to do in Floyd County, but hey - gotta do what ya gotta do). This semester I've befriended some really awesome 6th grade girls that make up an entire rec basketball team and I absolutely love going to their games. It's really sweet because they love having me there too.

This past week I got to sit on the bench with the teams two injured players. Don't ask me how this happened but somehow both of them broke their legs. Crazy coincidence, but that just means I get to hang out with them during games.

It's amazing to me how much you can learn about girls just by watching them play basketball. It's kind of weird, but oh so sweet. Some girls have oodles of natural talent and seem to have it all together on that court. Yet others seem to have no idea what their doing, but try so hard to get it right and be seen as valuable by their teammates.

The whole game was such an accurate picture of life. Some of us seem to have our whole lives together. We're calm, cool, and collected hiding behind our natural talents and not revealing who we really are to the world around us. And some of us feel constantly invisible, not really great at anything but striving so so hard to be noticed and needed by the world around us. Being at rec games makes my heart break for these girls so many more ways than sitting with them in a lunch room does, and am I so thankful for that ability to catch a better glimpse of who they are and how much they need to know my sweet sweet Jesus.

Moral of the story? Head out to a rec game. You'll learn so much about the sweet kids you're running after just by watching them play and supporting them in this special way (: