Before the feely-feelies, some other tid-bits:
1. Again and forever, thank you thank you thank you for continuing to extend your support, show your love, and offer encouragements and affirmations. Your hearts are so beautiful.
2. Stay tuned for an easy peasy opportunity to get involved in some world CHANGE.
3. I’ve had a route change! The first leg of our journey will now be Serbia, ROMANIA, Bulgaria, and GREECE. This means that we will be participating in some great ministry opportunities that have been made available and that I will have to RSVP to the Thanksgiving-in-Bulgaria invite that I got during a serendipitous meeting, politely decline, and request that we celebrate Halloween together instead.
In all the really awesome things people told me about college, no one ever told me to look out for the easy semester. Everyone gives great advice for the hard ones – and I’ve had plenty; the crazy busy, wait-did-I-forget-to-eat-again, ability questioning, if-I-blink-I’ll-fall-asleep, confidence challenging, am-I-really-cut-out-for-this, just plain nuts semesters. I expected that those would come, and they did. I didn’t expect though, that the least challenging semester would actually be the most challenging semester.
I like a good challenge. I like testing my limits. I like finding out what I’m capable of. I like climbing mountains and big piles of textbooks. I like really long runs and even longer nights in the library. There’s always a good view at the top or a sense of accomplishment at the end. But this semester isn’t full of that. I find myself right now in my final semester of undergrad, all but finished with graduation requirements and naturopathic medicine school pre-requisites. I find myself taking awesome classes, but ones that don’t require me pouring over the text for hours and hours in order to reach comprehension. For the first time in my college career, I’m finding out what people do during that 3pm – 6pm block if they’re not no a soccer field or in a weight room. It turns out the possibilities are only mildly endless in Nampa.
I find myself in a season that doesn’t feel like a real season; a season that feels a lot like when autumn is trying to break out in full force, but summer just won’t let go (hence the maybe confusing title of this blog). It’s like those few weeks when I better wear a parka in the morning, but over my shorts and Chacos because it’s 45 degrees warmer by the afternoon; I’m breathing cool, crisp air in the morning but drenched in sweat by 2. I find myself trying to hold on to every last bit of summer, but overwhelmingly excited to dive head first into fall, a pile of leaves, the occasional gloomy day, school responsibilities, and leaf crunching everywhere I walk.
I find myself in a season of great reflection and a whole lot of anticipation. It’s a season of preparing and a season of waiting. Most uncomfortably, I find myself in a season of rest. From everything everyone told me about college and everything I experienced thus far, I thought the challenging thing about rest was finding time to squeeze it in during those aforementioned crazy semesters. I’m finding out, though, that the challenging thing for me is learning how to experience real rest – not the kind of rest where I just don’t do anything for a while, I catch up on sleep, get my coveted introvert hours, or I’m frivolous with my free time. I had some of that and thought that was enough. But it’s not that. It’s the kind of rest that’s intentional and for the soul. It’s not a ceasing of activities, but a ceasing of strivings. It’s a remembering that not only do results of the things I do not define me, but neither does the fact that I am doing lots of things and working very very very hard at them.
I find myself at times reaching, searching, striving to have a schedule like the one I’ve held for the last few years; looking for new ways to challenge myself, looking for a new task to take on. In and of itself, I don’t think that’s a horrible thing, but I find myself wanting this busyness for the sake of my comfort zone that is busyness. I’ve found myself frustrated that doors I want to walk through are closed, that my plans apparently aren’t as perfect as I thought they were, and that I thought I had done my rest time but my heart keeps hearing “but McCrea Grace, you didn’t get it.” But I thought I got it. I can reason to the moon and back that a season of rest is a good thing, but I didn’t get it.
I find myself challenged by this “unchallenging” season and learning to lean into that; learning that it’s not only in the hardest times when my weaknesses are revealed; learning that it’s not only in the overwhelming circumstances that the Lord reveals his grace, his provision, and his perfect love; learning to let go of my ideas of what preparation is; learning that sometimes the best preparation isn’t checking off a big list of to-do’s, but simply learning how to be.
I like challenge because I like reaching goals, but I also like challenge because I like growing, and challenges, if approached appropriately, encourage growth. I like that when I ask God to reveal to me the areas of my heart that I haven’t yet given over to him or what he’s made me to be better at than how I’m currently doing, he’s quick to answer and quick to remind me who He says I am. I like that in every season the Lord is teaching, working, transforming, and preparing me for the seasons to come.
I find myself now confident that God has me right where he wants me, seeing doors open that don’t look the doors I expected to open, but are perhaps much more beautiful doors. I find myself in an in-between type of season, but a beautiful one nonetheless; one with all of the best things – warm sunshine, cool refreshing air, and beautiful changing colors all around.
“Seasons change and thou changest, but thy Lord abides evermore the same, and the streams of his love are as deep, and as broad and as full as ever.”
Charles Spurgeon
