For two years, I've been keeping this blog, and every entry I have successfully titled with song lyrics. Representative of the music that I'm so often listening to, singing, or imagining the beat in my head. This entry has no lyrics. It has no theme song, no background music. Trying to cover the events of the past 4 months since my last entry could never be captured in one short line, or one poetic chorus. My head, my heart, my emotions tried all summer long to create a song that would encompass all of the emotions that I felt and the activities that I did, but each valiant effort was met with nothing. No sound, no melody, not even a faint drum beat. This summer was met with silence.
I'm going to be skimming over a lot of details as I write this entry, and that's intentional. I don't want to share everything that happened with the world. Some things are just meant to be kept in the recesses of my brain, especially as I continue to sort them out. Really, this entry is for the sake of my future self - when 10 years down the road, I ask "what did I do May-August 2012?".
May can be condensed into one word. Haiti. Some of the best days of my life, without a doubt. The chance to build friendships with some amazing people, friends that I may not see again until heaven, was priceless and powerful. And all of those people who, for the past 5 years, have asked at one time or another "French? Why don't you take Spanish? Everyone speaks Spanish these days." were proven wrong. Haitians speak French. I thanked God every day I was in Haiti for the ability to understand them. Having conversations with teenagers about real life, and God, and even things like boys, all in French? Amazing. God encouraged my spirit in Haiti. I saw how people in other countries are above all else, still people. I learned how little I need to be happy. Returning to the United States was hard. I wasn't ready to leave, and I wasn't extremely thrilled to be home. It's impossible to explain the feelings and events to someone who hasn't been there...and I realized why people often come back from mission trips and aren't able to just talk about what happened. It would take me hours, and even then I would forget something. Amazing is really the best descriptor there is.
post-Haiti through June hit every possible emotional button that I have. Watching my roommate struggle through a lot of family drama and health problems, all the while having no way to help. Re-living my senior year in high school as my brother graduated from high school and made his preparation for college. Catching up with friends from home. Searching every day for a job, sending out dozens of applications, having four interviews, and every time being turned down. Watching my "sister" slowly lose her battle with cancer, and having to be put down. Mom lost her job (but eventually the funding came in for her to get it back). Needless to say, I was ready to go back to Pullman by the end of June.
July and August were slower as far as "big events" go, but they were still just emotionally frustrating. I've felt so displaced. I want to be connected with those at home, but as I try more, I seem to fail. Oh, and this was also the summer of babies and engagements. Yes, sometimes in that order. I know of at least 6 people who were posting 'hey, I'm pregnant' pictures on facebook on a regular (often too regular) basis. I think only 2 of them are actually married. Add that to the 4 engagement announcements and 1 or 2 new "relationship statuses"...it makes me nervous to log on every day and see what next. I just can't wrap my head around the fact that I'm old enough for all of this to be happening. It's a weird balance between feeling left behind/out since that's not where I'm at in life right now, and disconnected for the same reason. I'm just in college. Goin' to school. I'm not working a full-time job like some people. I'm not married, or even close to it. Definitely not pregnant. I'm just going to school. Living in the college world where time stands still, and our only major life events revolve around final exams and frat parties. Because this life is so different from what other people are doing, I yearned to get back to it. To feel validated in what I was doing. Moving back in was an eagerly anticipated event.
Of course, as fate would have it, the last week of my summer was probably the most fun that I had (excepting Haiti), and the old feeling of "I don't wanna leave yet" returned just in time for me to actually have to leave.
Where was God in all of this? He was both evident constantly, and yet elusive. I learned about trusting for His provision, and about letting Him comfort and take my cares. Primarily though, I was hearing over and over, new ways to explain how God loves. It's a crazy contrast, because even as I came out of summer understanding God's love in a new way, I also felt that for a majority of the summer, God was very silent. I had to seek Him out - track Him down when I needed to hear His voice. I did a lot of waiting. Which, in my lifestyle that is often motivated to never stop, having my schedule come to a grinding halt for 8+ weeks... was really hard. I didn't enjoy those times, but I did learn to appreciate their importance. Realizing that everything in every aspect of my life was out of my control, and being forced to wait on God as the only stability.
I have no doubt that this was my lesson. In the storm, be still. And know that He is God.
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