Two Months

Remember how I wrote that I was going to blog every week…almost two weeks ago? Oops.

Last week was spring break, and I spent most of it writing—working on my staff application for NLCF. And now I’m back, for the final stretch.

It’s ridiculous how close I am to the end of school. My graduation is May 16 and 17. So two months from now I will have graduated and will probably be on my way out of town. As I was driving back to Blacksburg on Sunday, I was remembering the last time I was riding up a winding mountain road at the end of my final spring break, with my impending graduation two months away. That was four years ago, and I was on the other side of the world then, still not even sure what the four years after that graduation would hold. I didn’t know what school I would be going to, or what it would be like when I got there. I knew I had nine short weeks left at the boarding school that had been my home for the past four and a half years. And I thought time was flying then.

At the beginning of the break my family and I had spent a few days at a retreat with a bunch of other families who were going to be leaving the country. I remember one session where we talked about transition. Then we all went off by ourselves and asked ourselves questions about the upcoming transition, and thought about what we hoped to see in the years following it. Like I said, I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t even know where I would be going to school yet. I just wanted God to use me, wherever I was, to make a difference in the lives of those around me.

The rest of that break I’d been at home, and I’d spent a lot of it thinking about the youth group back at school, that I was a leader of (one of maybe a dozen or so), and small groups in particular (which we led in pairs.) I had been feeling like the way small groups were being handled wasn’t as effective as it could be. I wanted them to be more closely-knit and consistent from year to year, and also to be more autonomous and less one-size-fits-all. I spent a good bit of time thinking and praying about it and drew up a rough plan for how I thought we should reorganize youth group to meet these goals. When I pitched it to the other youth group leaders after break, they didn’t really jump on it. My co-leader was completely on board, as he’d had the same concerns as me. A couple others liked the idea. But most didn’t see anything wrong with the way small groups were going. To be fair, our group was pretty different from the others just because of how the two of us led and who was in it. That’s part of why I was pushing for more autonomy, so we could have more freedom to lead our group better. The other groups didn’t really need this as much. The other leaders agreed to give it a shot though, for a few weeks, and see how it went. Unfortunately, it was so close to the end of the year, and so much was going on, that we only had youth group a few times before grad, and my plan never really got off the ground. I don’t know what happened to it after I left, but my guess is when they came back the next fall to start again, with me gone, they defaulted to the way things had always been done. Interestingly though, the Engage Groups we have at NLCF are similar in a lot of ways to my vision of small groups in high school.

Fast forward to this break. It’s been a lot of looking back and looking forward. I spent the first couple days backpacking with a group from NLCF. It was cold, but fun. Last time I was on a backpacking trip was in high school, so doing it again brought back those memories. We shared testimonies around the campfire, and I talked about my boarding school and my spiritual growth there. Of course it came up that I’d lived overseas, so then I went through that whole explanation to everyone who didn’t already know that. And looking ahead, another guy who was on the trip is applying to go on staff, so the two of us talked a lot about the application and about training and support raising, which are just around the corner after grad.

The rest of break I was with my parents, and I spent most of my free time working on the application. Parts of it were writing about my past—my journey to faith, experiences and individuals that influenced my life and spiritual growth, my calling to ministry. Most of these answers were from my boarding school years, at least in part. The other side of it was a lot of looking forward, thinking a lot about support raising and finances, and beyond that, to my expectations of my role as staff.

So all of this was swirling around in my head as I drove back to Blacksburg, Unlike four years ago, I was the one driving, and I was alone with my thoughts for a good seven hours. And my thoughts turned a lot to the nine weeks I have left. I still remember when I first noticed this phenomenon of each year going faster than the one before it. That was back in seventh grade. Since I’ve been in college, I’ve discovered that it isn’t a linear increase. The rate of acceleration is actually increasing. By the time I got to my senior year…man. I don’t even know what happened to the first half of this semester. The second half will be over in the blink of an eye. In the fall, all I could think about was graduating. But now it’s a little overwhelming how fast it’s coming, and maybe I’m not quite ready to leave just yet. I mean, yes, I can’t wait to be out of school. And I won’t exactly miss selling pizza. And the sooner I start raising support, the sooner I can come back to Blacksburg. But the reality is sinking in that I will still have to leave for a while, even if I am coming back. I’ll have to leave my Engage Group and my NLCF family. And I have friends who will be graduating or moving and won’t be here when I get back. And I will miss the pizza. This will be more bittersweet than I thought it would be.

So I’m praying for these less-than-nine weeks left. Sixty days, actually. Praying that I won’t miss them. That God would give me wisdom as I choose how to spend what little time I have left. That my time left with my Engage Group is good, and that God would continue to prepare them to carry on under new leadership. And that God would be preparing me to step—more like launch—into the next chapter of my life.

(I was going to make this short. I couldn’t do it.)