Summer
So here are some things that I have learned this summer.
First of all, I never expected the summer to be like this. The past couple years I was in Virginia Beach having really intense summers, full of growing pains and healing and learning and all of that stuff. This year, I stayed at home, to work and make money. Honestly, I never expected that God would reach me at home, I never expected that he would still pursue me and work in my life, because let's face it...home isn't Virginia Beach, and working at a day care wasn't supposed to be like LT (hah...).
Long story short, I have learned so much and grown so much this summer. It hasn't always been easy, in fact...pretty much nothing has been easy, but I came off of a really tough school year in which I was completely burned out. I wasn't connecting to God, I wasn't connecting with my emotions, school was hard, work was even harder, and I completely isolated myself from the people that cared about me the most. This summer, I re-connected with God, I re-connected with my emotions (a long story, but it all ended up for the best I hope), I feel more relaxed and I don't think I can remember the last time I wasn't stressed out, but I haven't been stressed out pretty much at all for the past month or so. That's a huge deal!
So the things that I've learned---
1)Patience. Working with kids...yeah, I found out pretty quickly that I needed more of this. But fortunately for me, I have some amazingly spiritual co-workers that could see that I struggled with this and they were and still are constant reminders for me that whenever I'm starting to lose patience with any of the kids, I just need to stop and pray and let God take over the situation. My mom reminds me before I go to work almost every day to love the kids, and that's exactly what I try to do. Sometimes it's harder than others, but regardless, I have a unique position in these kid's lives to show them God's love, to show them compassion, and to help them show compassion and kindness to the other kids that they are around. Still working on the patience, but I had someone tell me the other day that I seem to be so patient with the kids and that she doesn't remember seeing me 'lose it'. At least there's improvement there!
2) Loving people. I'm still not so great at this one...I have meant to write so many letters this summer to people from school, and I haven't written one. There's still time, though. I've at least seen that it's important in my life to love people and to not isolate myself from them, and I really hope that I don't fall back into that when I go back to school.
3) Loving myself. I was reading old journal entries last night, and I kept seeing things like "I suck!" or "I'm just a terrible person!" I was writing those things about myself...And I was reading them last night in total awe because I truly am very hateful towards myself. So all of that patience, love, and compassion that I've been working on showing towards other people, I've been trying to show it to myself as well. I basically decided last night that I am not going to write those kinds of negative things about myself again, and that I need to keep from thinking them about myself as well. It's easy to think that way, and it's easy to feel that way, but it's wrong and it needs to change. I may not exactly be the most deserving or worthy person out there, but God created me in his image and that deserves respect...especially from myself.
4) All the hidden meat products that companies stick in food. It makes me sick just thinking about it and I never want to eat any packaged food ever again. If I could afford it (both in terms of money and time), I would make my own food all the time and never have to worry about what was going into my body. This one isn't very deep at all, but sometimes I would rather starve than eat something with "Natural Flavors".
5) How to love music again. Working at a day care was the perfect job for me this summer. It's taken me practically the entire summer to figure out "long-term goals" for my life, but ultimately, I would like to teach. Wherever God takes me between the end of school and teaching is up to him, but I will say this. I am a musician, I am passionate about music. If I never played my french horn again, I would be cutting off a part of my soul. Because of my personality, though, I wouldn't work quite as hard at playing my french horn if I was just doing it for fun. For that, I do need goals...something to work towards...And if I don't want to stop playing, then I need to figure out some goals that are shorter than long-term, but still longer than short-term.
6) *Another shallow lesson learned* I must be more of a liberal than I originally thought, because when I voted today...I had to choose between the two parties (you can't split it up in a primary), and it came down to the fact that I would rather see the republican candidate as the US senator than Carl Levin. It actually pained me to have to circle all the way down the republican side, though...More than once, I considered throwing it away and getting a new one.
I'm sure that I have learned more things than just this, and that I will keep learning more during the rest of summer, but for now....this will do.
First of all, I never expected the summer to be like this. The past couple years I was in Virginia Beach having really intense summers, full of growing pains and healing and learning and all of that stuff. This year, I stayed at home, to work and make money. Honestly, I never expected that God would reach me at home, I never expected that he would still pursue me and work in my life, because let's face it...home isn't Virginia Beach, and working at a day care wasn't supposed to be like LT (hah...).
Long story short, I have learned so much and grown so much this summer. It hasn't always been easy, in fact...pretty much nothing has been easy, but I came off of a really tough school year in which I was completely burned out. I wasn't connecting to God, I wasn't connecting with my emotions, school was hard, work was even harder, and I completely isolated myself from the people that cared about me the most. This summer, I re-connected with God, I re-connected with my emotions (a long story, but it all ended up for the best I hope), I feel more relaxed and I don't think I can remember the last time I wasn't stressed out, but I haven't been stressed out pretty much at all for the past month or so. That's a huge deal!
So the things that I've learned---
1)Patience. Working with kids...yeah, I found out pretty quickly that I needed more of this. But fortunately for me, I have some amazingly spiritual co-workers that could see that I struggled with this and they were and still are constant reminders for me that whenever I'm starting to lose patience with any of the kids, I just need to stop and pray and let God take over the situation. My mom reminds me before I go to work almost every day to love the kids, and that's exactly what I try to do. Sometimes it's harder than others, but regardless, I have a unique position in these kid's lives to show them God's love, to show them compassion, and to help them show compassion and kindness to the other kids that they are around. Still working on the patience, but I had someone tell me the other day that I seem to be so patient with the kids and that she doesn't remember seeing me 'lose it'. At least there's improvement there!
2) Loving people. I'm still not so great at this one...I have meant to write so many letters this summer to people from school, and I haven't written one. There's still time, though. I've at least seen that it's important in my life to love people and to not isolate myself from them, and I really hope that I don't fall back into that when I go back to school.
3) Loving myself. I was reading old journal entries last night, and I kept seeing things like "I suck!" or "I'm just a terrible person!" I was writing those things about myself...And I was reading them last night in total awe because I truly am very hateful towards myself. So all of that patience, love, and compassion that I've been working on showing towards other people, I've been trying to show it to myself as well. I basically decided last night that I am not going to write those kinds of negative things about myself again, and that I need to keep from thinking them about myself as well. It's easy to think that way, and it's easy to feel that way, but it's wrong and it needs to change. I may not exactly be the most deserving or worthy person out there, but God created me in his image and that deserves respect...especially from myself.
4) All the hidden meat products that companies stick in food. It makes me sick just thinking about it and I never want to eat any packaged food ever again. If I could afford it (both in terms of money and time), I would make my own food all the time and never have to worry about what was going into my body. This one isn't very deep at all, but sometimes I would rather starve than eat something with "Natural Flavors".
5) How to love music again. Working at a day care was the perfect job for me this summer. It's taken me practically the entire summer to figure out "long-term goals" for my life, but ultimately, I would like to teach. Wherever God takes me between the end of school and teaching is up to him, but I will say this. I am a musician, I am passionate about music. If I never played my french horn again, I would be cutting off a part of my soul. Because of my personality, though, I wouldn't work quite as hard at playing my french horn if I was just doing it for fun. For that, I do need goals...something to work towards...And if I don't want to stop playing, then I need to figure out some goals that are shorter than long-term, but still longer than short-term.
6) *Another shallow lesson learned* I must be more of a liberal than I originally thought, because when I voted today...I had to choose between the two parties (you can't split it up in a primary), and it came down to the fact that I would rather see the republican candidate as the US senator than Carl Levin. It actually pained me to have to circle all the way down the republican side, though...More than once, I considered throwing it away and getting a new one.
I'm sure that I have learned more things than just this, and that I will keep learning more during the rest of summer, but for now....this will do.