Gracie
Belonging everywhere… Settled nowhere
As I wrote in my last post I have been having a difficult time writing lately. I have realized more and more why and the reality is, I have so much to deal with each day that at the end of, or even the beginning of the day, I have had very little brain power left to use on creative outlets of any kind. However, many of my writings come from moments or events in my life that strike me when I am processing them with others around me. During my Christmas break I was having a conversation with Heidi, that I have since had with others as well, about where I am right now in life.
This last year has been a whirl wind of change. It has all been really wonderful and fun, and while I have truly loved every minute, this is absolutely not where I thought I would be this time last year.
January of 2012, I was living in Kansas City, building a great community of friends, making plans to live in the home I was currently living in and talking with my roommates about what the next year would hold for them so we could begin deciding if we needed to find roommates to replace any of them in May. There was no question at that time whether I would be staying or not, but then in the end I was the one who was going to need a replacement. The point however, is that I was settling in, creating roots and making a home for myself and my new life. Little did I know that in just a few months I would be making the choice to uproot my life all over again and begin an entirely new and crazy adventure.
This was a little piece of my KC life. Top left to the right and down: My little house that I loved so much it wasn’t much but it was ours. My friends singing and playing. An amazing snow covered night. Me and my roommates loving each other, life and ice cream.
In April of 2012 I moved to southwest Missouri to step into the roll of Director of Barnabas Prep at Camp Barnabas.
I love my life!!!! So very much. I love what I am doing each day. However, the place that I am finding myself is a very interesting place in which I have never been before. ( Which is saying a lot for me – not out of pride, just out of fact – I have done a lot in my life and for a season to be totally new is exciting and awesome to see how the Lord can continue to surprise me with my life.)
I am in this weird limbo where I belong many places but I am not completely settled anywhere. I live full time at Barnabas with all our people so I have a place to call home and a community surrounding me so in the truth of a settled place this is where I live and belong. The thing is, that this is my living community and each day is truly all about relationship, but I am still the boss/leader which makes this community and these relationship different most days.
My life where I get to just be Sherryk is spread out between three different areas, Springfield, NWA, and Kansas City. These are the three places that I hop between in terms of meaningful relationships that are not about my job. Most of my co-workers with Barnabas who are all good friends live in Springfield, my life long friends and family all live in NWA, and the same kind of relationships are also in Kansas City. So I have been in all three places this year off and on.
I love everything about each place and that is what makes it all so difficult!
My current life. Top to right down: Enjoying sitting around a fire with students and staff while one of our students lead a bible study. Me and one of my students at the airport. The Barnabas staff… I love everyone of these people so much! All of our students filled shoe boxes for operation Christmas child and they loved getting to give to others.
I am in each place long of enough to still have deep relationships, but not long enough to truly be invested anywhere.
I have felt from the Lord several times Him saying that He just wants me all to Himself in the season and I have had several people in my life speak the same thing which has been simply confirmation to that very feeling. I don’t completely know what that means and why this is the Lord’s heart for me right now but, it seems to be the truth.
I am still loving it but, there are moments that I miss just being in one place and settled but then when I really stop and truly think about it, I am living such a great adventure each day!!!!
I have no idea on a regular basis what my day is going to hold. My job is truly an adventure each day but then everything outside of that time is also this element of just going and doing and letting the Lord work.
In this time I have had: amazing conversations; times of hanging out with people that I would have never hung out with; amazing times of worship and prayer with people I don’t normally get to worship and pray with; such amazing times of being a source of adventure for those around me and them getting provide adventure in my life; and just times of sweet peace and joy.
This time is amazing and challenging all at the same time. Full of life and people and yet, a little lonely. Blissfully satisfying and yet, missing something at moments. It is an everyday experience of contradiction. However, when I really stop to think about it and pray about it all, I truly wouldn’t have it any other way right now. It is a rather beautiful place to be.
I still have desires and dreams for things but for now I am simply loving this strange world of belonging everywhere.
The World Wide Web Is So Amazing!!!
The title of this post seems like it should be something that I would be proclaiming in the early to mid 90′s but here I am in 2012 saying hello to the internet and maybe appreciating this renewed introduction more than ever.
We all felt that without the internet our computers should just be in a pile like these old and out of date… haha
I have mentioned before how I live in the country and how it sometimes feels that we are living in Africa in comparison to the rest of the world, well the past month has felt this way more than ever.
There are about 25 of us who live here on this property together and often we find some peace away from the craziness through facebook, hulu, netflix, pinterest, and other various things we do online however all of that changed for us a little over a month ago.
We had several computer specialist out and many people throwing out their ideas of what it could be, but what in the beginning was really frustrating ended up kind of being enjoyable and changing some things around here. Early on in the adventure we would be talking and we would start to say well just look it up and then suddenly realize we couldn’t and get really aggravated at the lack of internet and at ourselves for forgetting. But as time marched we began to not notice in our day to day moments it simply just became what it was.
I used my computer only for work stuff like word, excel, and other things that we don’t deem as not the most fun thing in the world to do on a computer. Everyone else here began spending more time talking to each other and talking about real life and what was happening in their hearts. We began having less drama all around this place in so many ways. I realized it for the first time around week 2 when my boss called and said, “we are sending someone out but they can’t be there until tomorrow is that okay?” I thought about it and realized… yeah it is… we are actually doing better around here without it in many ways. He was as shocked as I was.
Now, this is not a rant about how we shouldn’t use the internet because of the evils it does to us, but being the Director of a program and a counselor who is working with 25 people every day and my job is to see the big picture each day it was an interesting time of observation.
I could see such a difference in the emotional and relational aspects of our little family here. It was powerful to me when I realized it. People began to become less me focused and more others and even community focused. Everyone began to learn new things about everyone around them both good and challenging things.
There was also so much more creativity happening everywhere we turned. We are creating some cottage industries here for students to work on and in this time everyone really got more excited about it than ever… including me. My desk suddenly became much more than an office desk used for sending emails and making phone calls.
These pictures are some ideas of what my office desk became without the internet being accessible on it.
A craft station!
A place where tears were shed, a refuge for relaxing and processing hearts.
It also became a place where ideas became real plans and plans became real things. I began finding great ideas for things from books, magazines, and brain storming opposed to just going to pinterest or even google. It was really fun to see how everyone began expanding how they thought about things and how creative my team really was.
We even came up with a new idea on things we could sell and give to our families and guests.
It has actually been a really fun time of getting to explore what life is like without many distractions that we each have each day and a lot of it come from this great place called the world wide web. While I have loved having the internet back and all of the benefits that come with it such as writing for this blog. I do at moments miss all that had did come out of the lack of access. My goal has become how can we still have the access we have and also keep the same spirit of living in community the same as it was without it. I don’t have perfect answers but we are working on trying to keep our little family connected even with all the things that would pull at us to keep us isolated from one another even in the same house hold.
This balance will be the next part of our adventure.
Other places I’m at:
