Transition Time

Transition times in one's life are sort of supposed to be a time of movement from one normal to another. Yet I feel like for the past few years, my life has been moving and molding at such a pace that the actual act of transitioning has become the new normal. I left Casowasco today and although the sock and watch tan lines are still vibrant and the smell of smoke is more than skin deep, I'm officially done with the craziness of a summer of camp.

Now I am home for a week before I leave for Philadelphia, where I will also be for a week, and then I will fly to Oregon for my fall semester and stay there until just before Christmas.  The thing that got me thinking about transitions the most however, is not so much that as it is the bed I am sleeping in tonight. I am sleeping in my old bedroom.

Every time I come home I usually sleep in the guest room which has sort of become my room, or I sleep on the floor somewhere or a couch or something. But my sister, brother-in-law, and niece are sleeping in that room and for one blissful night before more company arrives, I have this bedroom to myself.

It's weird though. I haven't slept on this bed since I was in high school. It brings back memories of the community I was invested in then. My mom used to come in and yell at me on school nights for being awake really late, talking to my friends online. I had a network of friends I felt really connected to that I had met on a Christian forum and I invested a lot of time in the conversations and relationships I had with them. I can't believe how much time I spent online. It's not my preferred way of communicating now, but I don't regret it. It's just so different and foreign to me now.

Then right after high school graduation, I jumped right into a summer job at camp where I was torn away from the internet, took my first steps away from my consistent investment in my home church, almost completely lost touch with my friends from high school, entered into my first dating relationship, and built an entirely new kind of community with a Christian staff of crazy, awesome coworkers. This was a new level of community for me. Tangible people, eager to talk about Jesus, all with a common mission. I remember not wanting to leave.

But alas -- right after camp ended I was thrown straight into Mission Year. A slap in the face compared to the life I'd lived before. A huge dose of cultural humility and a gargantuan gift of some of the most beautiful Christian community I may ever experience. This was a time where I learned to see the worth God has given -- to myself, to others, to the creation around us. This was a time where I learned about brokenness. Where I learned how to think deeply. Where I learned to ask questions that probed the soul and pierced the heart. I definitely did not want to leave.

Right after Mission Year I jumped into college. It took a lot longer to build trusting relationships than it did during Mission Year. I felt lonely. But I also was pushed to be more responsible for my own growth. I struggled to be okay with being there, but eventually realized college to be a gift of time to equip myself. I really dove into academics. I read everything assigned to me. I loved so much of it. My mind was working full time, being pushed intellectually -- it wandered to places where I daydreamed about anything and everything, about the world becoming more beautiful, about healing, about relationships with my friends from school and Mission Year and camp and the internet. I spent a lot of time by myself doing schoolwork... growing still, but in a completely different way than the physical growth of camp or the emotional growth of mission year. I got to meet several of my "cyber" friends during this year. The way I related to my Mission Year teammates -- who were so recently my family -- changed. My relationship with God seemed to become a lot more necessary and I learned a lot about listening and speaking with God during this time.

But the year came to a close and with a few weeks between school and camp, I spent a week of vacation with two of my Mission Year teammates, which reminded me of the beauty of intentional community but also the difficulty that comes with it. I also got to spend some more restful time with God.

The restfulness ended as soon as I got to camp. The past ten weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. It was a completely different experience than the last time I was there. A largely new staff, for one. I wasn't in a relationship, for two. And I wasn't a counselor this time around -- I was an programmatic assistant in The Highlands -- a wilderness outpost section of camp that is remote and sometimes forgotten about. Instead of interacting with a large rotation of staff, my main relationship was the girl I was assisting all summer and the new rotation of campers each week. I taught kids how to cook, did dishes, pushed schedules, taught a poop load of random things -- like how to tie knots, shoot archery, make stoves out of cans, take a dump in the woods, take military showers, etc -- slept under the stars, fixed bedwetting situations, provided first-aid, and a squillion other things. All that to say it was a completely new experience. Overall, I'm glad for it. But I didn't have much in the way of space or time to think, process, pray, or even sleep. Now it's over and I've said goodbye to a bunch of people that I may or may not ever see again. I'm not sure if I'm getting tired of all these new communities or if I was just too tired to care as much, but honestly, I wasn't as sad as I usually was. Transitioning is just what has to happen now.

Community from home, online community, camp community, Mission Year community, college community. They've all been the biggest part of my life at one point or another and a few from each place stick around and stay in contact, leaving me with friends all over the country and all over the world. I'm quickly heading to school to reunite with a past community for a week before heading to Oregon to add a new one to my list. And who knows what will happen after that.

Being home for the past ten hours has reminded me that my family is another one of those communities that I'm in and out of touch with. I sometimes feel like they get stuck with me when I'm in transition mode and I'm not focused on them, but on the things I need to prepare or the rest that I need or the connections I need to make happen. This leaves me feeling like they're being gypped of the love and energy they deserve from me. I am working on this.

In the midst of all the craziness though, I have to look back and realize that it's been a little over 2 years that all of this has taken place in and realize how incredible that is. I have changed and grown so much. I've morphed into a completely different person than I was and I know that a couple years from now I will have changed again. It's beautiful and good and ridiculous. It's life.