I work at Shepherd’s Hill Farm, a wilderness-type Christian boarding school for troubled teens. At work, I sleep in the woods with the girls in the program. It took some getting use to at first but as I have grown closer to the girls and fallen in love with each of them… I have tried to work more and more…. so most of my nights are spent there.
And I actually prefer sleeping there, its weird I know but I have come to love the sounds of nature… I love the community that comes with being in a cabin together with no electricity, no t.v., no pantry stocked with food, no laptops or facebook…. nothing but us, out there in the middle of God’s beautiful creation. Out there, life is not to busy to stop and admire the scenery, to ask one another how we are REALLY feeling, to tell stories, to ask questions, to listen, to talk to God, to learn what it means to live in community, to meditate on our days activities…..I could go on and on. There are so many things that are so important to our identity, our relationship with God, and each other that get pushed to the back burner because of all the things we have come up with to distract us. We think we are making life easier and more convenient but in reality we are making it harder to concentrate on what matters most.
Sometimes I find myself using work as an escape from real life… I ask myself why I would rather be there than in the luxury of my own home, where I can eat whenever I want, where I can sleep in the air condition, where I can do what I want and not worry about everyone else…..Donald Miller could not have answered my question more perfectly….because self indulgence is boring!
The girls at work have the same routine everyday so they want to be a part of a story, they want to have something to work toward, they get excited when I invite them on adventures, they want to hear all about my day, and tell me all about theirs…. all the outside distractions are not an option for them. When I’m there I feel like I’m living a story, I feel like my energy is contagious, the smallest things mean so much, the things that matter don’t go unnoticed,and they remember things I tell them that even I don’t remember. I have this opportunity to put some excitement in their day, to give them something to talk about, to make them laugh, and to be vulnerable with them, so they can see the real and imperfect me…so they understand that everything good that comes from me comes from Christ because I have many of the same weaknesses they do. The more vulnerable I am, the more they feel o.k. being vulnerable with me, and the more we are able to pull each other up. I can honestly say I learn just as much if not more from those girls than they learn from me. The setting, the scenery, the characters…it’s all beautiful. It’s a story I love being a part of. I went into this job thinking of it as a summer job that would be kind of cool… oh I had NO idea.
I have not felt so alive in so long! In the woods, when I wake up in the morning, and look around to see my 7 girls waiting on me to wake them up and make a new story for that day… I get a crazy energy. These girls have managed to have such a big part of my heart in such a short amount of time.
Last night, I had a night off. I couldn’t relax at my house so I went outside to lay underneath the stars. Immediately God’s artwork sucked me in and all the distractions were gone. It was Him and I and this beautiful picture He painted that says so much. I prayed for community, I prayed that people would begin to overlook the distractions and stop to take a long look at creation and at one another. I started to notice some of the trees and how their imperfection is what makes them beautiful. I wondered why in nature being different and imperfect was beautiful and usually draws positive attention…. why do we not appreciate different people like that? 
I thanked God for the way I am learning to see people for who they are, not what they have and what they look like, but for their hearts. I asked Him to help the girls see my heart, to help them see how much I care, and how much I love them. Then the longer I stared into the sky, I said, “never mind God….. just as I feel overwhelmed by YOUR love and see you everywhere in your creation, let them see How much YOU love and care about them because that will carry them so much further.”
