"You HAVE to Jump!"

I spend an oddly large amount of time with children under the age of 12. In fact I recently gave away FloydFest tickets because I would rather spend the evening with a 9 and 7 year old than go to the festival. (So weird I know). Through my years as a WyldLife leader I've also learned that young people between the ages of 5 and 14 can pretty much get me to do anything. It's a blessing and a curse. I've been convinced to ride roller coasters, eat weird things, and make a fool of myself dancing in front of large groups of people.

This past week I've gotten the blessing of spending an extra abnormal amount of time with the world's greatest 7 and 9 year olds. It always surprises me how much you can learn from little kids. Jesus draws to many parallels to little children in the Bible so it shouldn't be that surprising, but it is. The girls spent the afternoon with me the other day and decided that they wanted to go swimming in the pond at the house I'm staying at. I'm not big on ponds or murky water or the gross bottoms of ponds or water with fish and snapping turtles in it. Trying to be sneaky I didn't put on my bathing suit and told the girls I couldn't get in because I forgot a bathing suit. Don't know if you've ever hung out with girls this age, but they are freaking relentless.

Ten minutes later I was standing on the end of the dock wearing a life jacket (I know how to swim, just wanted to keep myself from touching the bottom, and the girls got to laugh at me in the process) and all my clothes with fearless little girls on both sides of me. "You HAVE to jump!" They kept screaming. I tricked them a couple times and got them to jump in without me, but eventually I caved and jumped in the pond.

Plot twist: I didn't die. Shocker, I know. I survived, I laughed, I jumped in a few more times, and I even had fun.

How many times in life do I face situations where I don't want to jump? Where I stand at the end of the pier and make excuses instead of jumping in? Oh how I wish these sweet little girls would follow me around all day everyday and remind me that I have to jump. I have to jump into relationships. I have to jump into uncomfortable situations. I have to jump into things that Jesus calls me into even when I don't want to, just like Peter stepped out of the boat. I have to trust that whatever I'm being called into is worth the risk, and that's scary as crap, but it's also an exciting adventure.

Jump. 

Worms & Weeds.

In the 9th grade I spent an entire semesters researching earthworms. Of all the biology topics I could've chosen to spend my semester reading about I'm not entirely sure why I chose worms, but I did. And I quickly found out that in all of scientific history pre-2009 there were only about 4 papers written about worms, so I spent the whole semester reading the same 4 papers that all basically said the same exact thing about worms:

1. They have like 3 stomachs
2. They eat dirt
3. They poop dirt
4. They are both male and female at the same time, but can't fertilize their own eggs
5. Too much rain = worms on sidewalks

And there you have it - the incredible simple earthworm. I learned a good deal that semester, well as much as you can from 4 empirical articles, but there's one important life changing outcome of my semester of worms - dirt. 

If I had to try to pinpoint when I really starting loving dirt it was probably around the same time I started developing a weird enough interest in worms to study them as a high school freshman. It is nearly impossible to learn about worms and not also learn about dirt. And thus, as my semester's exploration of the earthworm concluded in a ten page paper (the struggle to write that was very, very real) my love for dirt lived on.

(So much so that mom tried to convince me to major in soil science here at Tech - big regret there. More on that later).

Here at Magnolia we created something of a dream for me - we created a really big patch of dirt in our back yard. Last summer we tilled up a part of our backyard and turned it into a vegetable garden and had so many zucchinis we literally made 2 zucchini cakes a week. It was ridiculous. This summer we got to re-till and prep the land entirely by hand. Hard work, don't get me wrong, and very, very dirty, but very, very fun. 

I love our garden. It's legitimately one of my absolute favorite places on the planet. You can learn so much from gardening. It connects you to nature and has a billion ways that it is a picture of God. 

Today as I was weeding the small section of our garden that was not lucky enough to receive weed resistant paper there were a million different things running through my head. But I kept coming back to the idea that my garden is a battleground. I am constantly fighting the weeds for possession of that one paper-less corner. The stray cats that inhabit our backyard are always mistaking the garden for a litter box. The sun is murderous to by little vegetables, but too much water is also killer. But don't get me wrong, those plants are resilient little guys. Just like my garden in a battleground, so is my heart. The weeds are sin, it pops up everywhere. Even when I spend hours pulling weeds out of the garden I can't get them all, and when I come back in the morning there will be even more. I can spend my whole life trying to pull all the sin out of my heart, but I'll never get all of it. I'll turn around and encounter and act on more sin in my heart. I will seek out things that bring me spiritual death, that scorch and starve my soul, or that drown it in excess. 

God loves me like a love my garden. He finds joy working and shaping my heart the way that I find joy in working this dirt with my hands. Life comes from this worm and weed infested dirt, and he makes life spring forth from my sin infested heart. He wants to help me rid my heart of the sin that is crowding out the work that he's doing and has become rooted so deep. 

By the end of the summer my roommates and I will have been able to enjoy a bountiful harvest of yellow squash, zucchini, cucumber, peas, watermelon, and cantaloupe that we raised and tended to with our own hands. That we nurtured and loved. 

I need to learn to trust that I have a God that wants to nurture and feed my soul, and weed my heart of sin, and wants to see me grow and has a bountiful harvest in store for me. I need to learn to be a little bit more like our zucchini plants, and do what I was created for - trust in my God and be in a relationship with him that includes me being fully reliant on him, I can't weed my own heart, and I can't force myself to grow.

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes[a] so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." 

John 15:1-4

Abide.

Our humble little backyard garden in all it's glory.

Flowers mean fruit and fruit means yummy food.

Our first zuke of the summer!! In a few weeks this guy will be ready to serve as our inaugural zucchini boat.

Watching these little guys grow is so weird, but oh so cool.

Randy's humble little pea plants - these guys started out as little seeds and they're only going up from here!

Squashs <3

TwoOhOneFour.

In 2014 I fell in love.

Okay, slow down, not that kind of love. Well, maybe. If I had it my way I'd be on the arm of a sweet, handsome, and Jesus loving boy (probably one of the uniformed type - there, you have your confirmation), but who am I too make plans? A 21 year old girl and still mostly convinced that boys have cooties.

So in 2014 I didn't fall in love with a boy, shocker. I got a tattoo, died my hair purple, went to Italy with my best friend, read the entire Chronicles of Narnia series, and flew to Germany for the last time (last one is super bittersweet). Oh and I turned 21, I guess that's kind of a milestone in the US of A. I did a lot, and a lot of rather exciting things. And I learned a lot. I'm a very blessed 21 year old.

But back to love. In 2014 I fell in love with mountains (I've always loved mountains, but that love grew lots), and elementary schools, and passion. I read a quote somewhere (most likely Pinterest) that said, "Passion changes everything." Which I promptly wrote on the cover of my journal with the word "everything" capitalized. Passion changes EVERYTHING. I'm not an incredibly passionate person. I'm not moved easily, and more often than not I don't see things through (just ask my mother, this is her favorite trait of mine).

I fell in love, and it made me passionate, and it changed everything. Honestly I probably couldn't tell you what I wanted to do with my life this time last year. Odds are it was probably something close to guidance counselor or full-time ministry, but just so that I'd have a viable answer for the age old "So what are you going to do with your life?" question. I knew I liked kids, I knew I liked schools, I knew I liked places like Floyd, but there's definitely a difference between I-like-this and I-want-to-do-this-forever feelings.

Interning as a guidance counselor these last five months wrecked me. I failed. I messed up. I realized I know nothing. I sat, tongue tied with hurting kids because I didn't know how to help them. But strangely, I loved it. In my beloved Floyd I watched school become so much than a place for kids to learn math. Here they were fed, safe, got almost any kind of help they needed and in the guidance office we got to fight for kids' wellbeing and success and teach them about being little people.

I don't stick with anything, I don't stay anywhere. But here I am prepping for grad school (and dreading the 3 years I have to wait to actually be in an elementary school) and man oh man is it so worth it. It's hard. It's hard to watch kids hurt for any number of reasons and not know what to do or be able to help in the way that I want to, but as a friend of mine recently put it you have to love the potential for goodness in your job to love it. And there is so much potential for good, for change that is wholesome. I haven't gotten to see a ton of that, but I've been able to see little glimpses and that's enough. Enough to make me fall in love with the kiddos, and the school, and all the work that I have to do to get there.

Cheers to elementary schoolers for making me fall in love and become passionate for once in my life.