Orphan No More: The Great Adventure!

Guys, I'll be honest. I've started, edited, deleted, and repeated that cycle with this blog post multiple times in the past couple of weeks. I've been wanting to really process everything that happened during my internship and try to write it out now that it's over, but that has been something I've been working on, and will be working on, for awhile.

You see, I was trying to hurry up and close that season of my life for good so that I could look ahead to the next season God has for me, the next promise that I know is coming. Truth is, that season is over. Red Bus Project fall 2014 is in the books.

On most levels.

The season of my life that is Red Bus Project fall 2014 may be closed in most ways, but it's still open in the sense that there is still SO much that I have yet to learn. Little by little, day by day, I look back and remember things that I hadn't remembered before. Each of those moments are full of new knowledge and perspective - they're teaching me about who God is, about who I was and have become, but how constant and there God was the entire time. Those moments, I pray, will continue to occur for days, months, and years to come.

While I'm so excited about continuing to learn from this experience, I still have mixed emotions.

Honestly, there's a part of me that wishes that my fall internship never had to end, that tour didn't have to end, that my intern family didn't have to part ways and each of us go back to our families so we're all states away from each other now. That part of me was miserable while I was in the same town where my internship took place today because I was there and they weren't, and this part of me focused on that SO much.

Meanwhile, there's another part of me that wishes I never had to leave my friends at school either, because going from doing life with them 8 months out of the year to seeing them 2-3 times for just a day or two at a time in a semester has been rough. That part of me wishes I could combine my internship, my school, and my home all into one.

There's another part of me that is so excited to return in the spring to intern again that it's kind of ridiculous. Okay, it's a lot ridiculous. But I'm really trying to tone it down, promise.

That's where the little bitty other part of me is. This other part of me has been learning since my fall internship ended that there is a time for everything, which means, there's plenty of time to continue learning from past experiences while recognizing that they're over, looking forward to what's to come with excitement, but also learning to be content with where God has me right now.

"Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me." -Philippians 4:11-13 ESV

Even though I'm not specifically facing the same scenarios as Paul, I am in my own sense. While my circumstances are different, I still have the opportunity to learn to be content.

I'm not in TN or Campbellsville for a little while. BUT, I do have a couple of months at home to spend with my family, my church family, and my fellow staffers and kids at the Y, and I get to spend these months pouring into the kids at work and into my family!

I'm not around my CU or Franklin friends as much. BUT, I do have the ability to talk to them as often as we can and to even go see them while also reconnecting with friends here at home.

At the same time, this time I have in between seasons of ministry is a time for me to step back and refocus on Christ. I think it's so ironic, but really it's God's crazy-amazing sense of timing, that I have this time to refocus during this season of advent, leading up to Christmas. There's no better time than now to step back and refocus on Christ, to rediscover the joy, the mercies, and the love that He brings.

So every day for the next 55 days, until I go back to TN for the spring, is a chance for me to choose. Will I choose to continue learning how to be content and fall more in love with God and how He plans everything for our (my) good or will I choose to struggle and lose to my humanness and focus on all of my crazy/all over the place emotions?

Charles Spurgeon says it best when he says, "Remember this, had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are, divine love would have put you there."

There's no other place I need to be right now than where I am.

So I will be content.
I will refocus.
I will wait, patiently.

Here's to the close of one chapter and the excitement of a new one being written, all while waiting in the footnotes of the previous chapter. Because I'm still learning from this past chapter, but I'm not quite ready or able to start the writing of this new chapter.

Some say this waiting game is hard, and it is, but most importantly, it's another part of the Great Adventure! (Hooray for ending with a SCC pun!)