End of an Age.

I've literally started re-writing this post like 12 times today. A ridiculous amount of emotions are rushing through me and it's just a tad on the odd side. Today was the last day of school for all my friends in Floyd County so here's what that means:

• My 2 favorite high school dudes/teammates are done with high school. A very very bittersweet situation because they're both coming to Tech in the fall, but our time as teammates has basically reached it finale. 
• The 7th graders have graduated out of elementary school and out of WyldLife. They'll be up at the high school from now on and some of our strongest campaigners are now in the hands of the ever capable YoungLife team. Watching them go has actually made me tear up a little.
• The 6th graders are now 7th graders. They run Floyd E now and praise the Lord that I'm not forced to say goodbye to them just yet.
• The 5th graders are now big middle schoolers and I won't get to spend copious amounts of time with them in English class, but we'll be lunch buddies for the next 2 years so that's a definite perk. 
• Walking into Jenna's class next year will get me lots of weird looks from brand new 5th graders that have no idea in the world who I am.
• It's summer. Finally.

It's been a busy and crazy year. To be completely honest I don't even really remember all that's happened. Our beginning of the year planning weekend for WyldLife feels like eons ago. It's neat to look back though and see how much we've changed individually, as a team, and as a ministry here in Floyd. 

Before this year we'd never had campaigners (Bible study) for middle schoolers in Floyd. Now at the end of the year we have about 15 kids consistently coming every week to dive deeper into the Bible with us. Before this year we'd never had a full school year of WyldLife clubs. Two semesters, lots of craziness and 14 clubs later tons of kids have gotten to hear the good news of Jesus Christ and we've officially been in business for a whole year. At the beginning of the year we had about zero girls coming to campaigners. There are now four or five 5th grade girls that come regularly and that we'll get to keep learning with and loving for the next two years. Our team shrunk, grew, changed, is about to shrink again, and will likely grow again as well. We've watch kids turn from death to life and begin to transform and bring light to their school. We even got to take our first group of Floyd WyldLifers EVER to Rockbridge camp for winter weekend in January. 

I leave this beautiful county I so lovingly call home in just shy of a week to spend a month working at a YoungLife camp in New York and its like I'm being forced to travel somewhere but leave my heart behind. This county became my home this year. These people became my family. Last summer Floyd and the girls here barely ever crossed my mind, this summer they're all I'll think about. It's crazy to me how the Lord works when he plops you down in some random place to tell people about him. He took me - a girl who, because of my upbringing, has basically zero emotional attachment to anywhere in the world and no place to consider home - and made my heart swell, and break, and never want to leave this tiny rural county in a forgotten corner of Virginia. Placed me on a team of humans whom I fail and support, and who fail and show me the love of Christ so that I'm able to depend on him more and get a better picture of who he is. He's turned kids lives around completely on his own to remind me that I'm not an integral part of the process, but allowed me to play small roles to remind that even though he doesn't need me he still wants me. 

Transformation. That's really the word that sums up this entire school year for me. Nothing about myself, or WydLife, or Floyd looks exactly the same as it did when the year started, and that is all thanks to the almighty God of the universe who's deeply in love with Floyd County. Who laid all the pieces in their absolute right places so that I could basically spend the entire year in a 5th grade classroom as a volunteer and is making it possibly for me to continue working with ALL the kids at Floyd E as an intern in the guidance department next year. It blows my mind how much he's worked in one year and I think this scatter brained, all over the place, discombobulated post speaks right to that.

Thank God for being sovereign. And thank God for my sweet sweet Floyd County. 

Camo and a Carhartt....Floyd's effected my fashion choices just a tad.

We really love selfies - especially car selfies - at WL.

Hanging at my second home with my very large second family.

Our last (and biggest?) club of the year. Probably one of my favorite pics of all time. 

Softball: the official sport of Floyd County.

Giving back to our awesome county at ProjectFloyd.

The awesomely awkward and cool Nick and Garrett - my favorite high schoolers (now ex-high schoolers I guess) on the planet.

2 of the first 3 leaders to ever graduate from leading in Floyd. 

Taken after my 5th grade friends destroyed me at knockout (basketball is the other official sport of Floyd County).

Told you we loved selfies! Especially with my buddies who are now high schoolers!!!!

Invitation In.

I run a taxi service. My friends call it Bloodbath's Taxi Service, and kids in Floyd don't really call it anything. But no matter what it's called, it exists. It always seems like I'm driving someone somewhere and am always ready to play chauffeur when I'm needed. I used to hate this. It felt like all I did was drive around like a slave to all my friends, college or middle school, but then I realized that I loved being in a car with someone. It was an interrupted time where we could just talk.

Usually when it comes to kids in Floyd driving them home is about as far as our time together goes after club or campaigners. There are usually so many kids in need of Bloodbath's Taxi Service that I never get to go in to the house with any of the kids, and frankly am never invited to. But my sweet friend Alma threw that norm out the window this week after campaigners, and the time that came of it was even sweeter than she is.

I drive Alma home from campaigners every Monday, and I love it a lot. She's a fire cracker, loves to talk, and therefore fills the entire time it takes to get from the Gill's house to her house with laughter and chatter and all around crazy fun. Usually she's the first stop on the night's route of drop offs so with my car full of kiddos I wish Alma a good rest of her week and their ends our interaction for that week. But by some stroke of fate, Alma was the last kid I had to drop off this week. We pulled up to her house like usual, I threw the car in park, told her to have a great week, said hi to the dog through the window, and got ready to drive away. As she got out of the car though Alma said to me, "You can come in if you want. I don't want it to seem like all you get to do is drive me around." What?! Heck yes I will come in with you! (Perks of summer - everything gains an air of spontaneity).

So I went in with Alma. I met her mom, her stepdad, her two adorable younger siblings, and got to chat with her older brother that I already kind of knew. For forty-five minutes we just hung out in their dining room and talked. We talked about why I was in Floyd, how crazy Alma was, and how her brother and I will both be working at Lake Champion for a month this summer (their mom got really excited about this). It was fun. We laughed, the kids ate ice cream and it was so natural and casual, so refreshing to be a room with people of all ages just wanting to know a little bit more about each other and really about what was being said.

An invitation in. That's all it took for me to be able to see a little bit more of Alma's life. In YoungLife we always talk about "living life" with kids, and I struggle a lot with what that looks like for my ministry in Floyd because most of my day to day life takes place forty-five minutes away from where any of my girls live. But this experience with Alma taught me a couple things:

1. Living life doesn't just mean sharing my life with girls, but also sharing THEIR life with them. Its super fun to talk a girl grocery shopping with me, or to have them over one weekend to my house, but making an effort to get to know their life? I can't imagine that that doesn't have an even bigger impact on their life. To care about them enough to say, Yeah, I have to drive forty-five minutes home, but I will most definitely come into your house with you tonight because I love you and this is your life. I want to know your life.

2. Simply invite Jesus in. I've really been discovering a lot lately how we complicate life with Jesus so much more than is intended, and that I keep my life so walled off to him. We've also been talking at my church currently about being a child of God. Praying like a child, acting like a child, having faith like a child. So why is it so hard to be like Alma and simply extend an invitation to Jesus into my life?

Food for thought.

Porch Sits.

In the winter time I have a strong belief that God especially hangs out in coffee shops. Obviously he's everywhere all the time, but I think that he is extremely present in certain places, like coffee shops in the winter. In the summer though I think its on front porches that he has a special love for. I learned that "porch sits" as they're endearing referred to are something that is very country. You literally just sit on the porch. All day. And I love it. In fact the only thing that would make my sweet Magnolia better is if we had a front porch that I could sit on all day long.

Porches are awesome for sitting, but they're even better for talking. Post up in a rocking chair next to someone on a front porch and just go to town. Gab the day away. You'll be amazed at what you'll learn about life, about Jesus, about the person sitting next to, it's awesome. There's just something about a beautiful day on a back country road that makes people want to open up, to be real, to be vulnerable and to share about life. I don't really know what about a beautiful on a porch of a house on a back country road makes that happen, but that's what makes me think that Jesus really likes porch sits.

I've been reading through John 15 lately and wrestling with what it really looks like to abide in the Lord. To spend time with him with out expectation. To just be in a moment with him and quietly enjoy his presence. What does that look like? How do I actually make that happen? Porch sits.

How cool would it be to spend a day sitting in a rocking chair next to Jesus? It would literally be the best. I think what makes me so excited about that image is that its casual. When you hang out with someone on their front porch you don't have expectation of where the conversation will go, you don't meticulously plan out every word you say so that it's the most formal sounding. You just talk. There are often lulls in conversation as you enjoy the beauty of the day and the company of the person you are with. Everything so opposite of how I've thought spending time with God looked like. So opposite of the formulas and agendas I always feel myself falling into.

So let's say goodbye to our expectations, our Jesus checklists, our comparisons to others, and just porch sit with Jesus. Sit down with him and simply enjoy his company. Throw our cares out the window and spend simple but meaningful time with the man who overcame death for us.

Even Though You're Young.

When we decided to start up campaigners for Floyd WyldLife last summer none of us really knew what it would look like or what to expect. Well actually we kind of did...in true YoungLife tradition we expected there to be oodles of girls showing up every week and maybe three or four guys if we were REALLY lucky. That's just the way YoungLife works, girls are waaaaaay more into than the guys are. But of course we do ministry in Floyd and everything about Floyd is weird or pretty much the opposite of what you would expect. So that meant that our campaigners are 5th - 7th grade boys. To the point that some week girls don't even show up. The girls that do show up are rockstars, I've seen them grow a lot this year and its been so sweet to watch their hearts change for their friends. But the boys are where I've been most encouraged; which is really freaking weird because typically 13 year old boys do not encourage 20 year old girls, but hey this is Floyd and we do what we want.

Zach is in 7th grade. He's a rising track star and has one of the most genuine hearts for the Lord I've ever seen in someone his age. Zach gets it. He runs after the new kids, the weird kids, the kids who don't have many friends, who no one talks to. He invites them to WyldLife events, he loves them, and most importantly he prays for them. When I was in 7th grade I was a whole lot more worried with how straight I could get my hair and how I could get out of gym class than I was with wanting my friends to know Jesus.

I'm consistently amazed by this kid. 99% of the time I'm pretty sure his faith is a lot stronger than mine. The sweetest thing is that I know for a fact that I have had nothing to do with the awesomeness that's occurring because of Zach. It's all Jesus and that is incredibly cool and humbling. Praise the Lord that he works in such crazy and backward ways and that I'm able to find challenge and encouragement in the Lord through a 13 year old boy.

One of my favorite verses of all time is 1 Timothy 4:12.

"Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity." - 1 Timothy 4:12

And watching middle schoolers that are sold out for their God is such a sweet and humbling thing to experience. PTL that I even get the privilege to be a part of the uprising of these young people.

It's Not Yours.

Yesterday one of my cadet friends signed a contract with the Army. He signed on the dotted line and signed over his life to the United States Army. For the next four to twenty years he basically has zero says in where he lives, what job he does, who he works with, even what he wears. The Army is in control and in essence his life is no longer his.

How many of you read that and thought, "Man, sucks to be that guy. Glad I'm not in his shoes." I know I did. Every time I sit down at a table full of cadets for breakfast I look at them and think to myself they're voluntarily entering a life that puts them in danger, takes control from them. I see the hardships that I know they're going to face, and I think thank goodness I am removed from that. Thank goodness I have control over my life....

That's the point where I laugh at myself. Me? Have control over life? LOL to that. A few years ago I kind of signed a contract similar to the one my cadet friend did yesterday. No, I haven't been in the Army for a few years. When I gave my life to Christ, invited him in, I also handed over control to him. Now this "contract" of sorts isn't all that binding. I'm free to leave it if I please, I'm free to only comply to certain parts of it if I really want, but what's the point of that? What do I get from half-hearted following God? Nothing. I get nothing. My God still loves me, but what I gain from not being all in is failure and disappointment.

So sign on the dotted line. Hand your life, your control over to the only one who has the ability to control, because to be completely honest it was never yours to begin with.