For the first time in a very long time I feel almost like I've had a normal weekend.
My life has not been normal for quite a while now. I've been tested, pushed, and challenged like crazy within the last couple weeks. As most of you know I lost my best friend and only fellow Christian in the the group. Then there's all the other crap that's gone along with it. God gave me strength through it, and I believe I was able to seek him this whole time. I also got to visit with Megan and my cousin Abby since they came to see me about a week after this transpired (not that it's necessarily over, my friends). I've been incredibly blessed through the support I've had back home. Megan, in particular, has been a huge source of encouragement. I miss her like crazy and it was so good to get a brief touch with where I come from.
Take that out of the picture and I've been part of a program that aims to teach kids to be adults, in a often childlike way. Coming into the program as an adult has proved hard. Not that it hasn't taught me things. Although I can truly say that not a lot of it has been through the program outcomes themselves. It forces us to live in large group, and somehow make it work. We live with people, fight with people, work with people, and meanwhile, sometimes, we touch these people. Or they teach us. We run from place to place learning to recycle, fill in protocols, and make sure our alarm clocks are always set (something I was good at already).
In the last month and a half this program has manifested itself for us in a place called Marathon. A typical, definite small town sitting on lake Superior, with it's marvelous beaches, loads of trails, and abundance of wildflowers. We've been kept busy, almost beyond reason. Especially at first. We're in the paper and people have made use of the fact that if they have a reasonable cause we will come and work for them, on top of the full time jobs we fill.
Then there's the fact that we're here over summer. It somehow makes me re-evaluate to know that in my own small town they're hanging out at the river, camping on the beach, sitting on the top of mountains, eating fresh cherries, and that plans are as set as they get for our yearly family get-togethers. Which I've certainly never missed.
I don't know what I'm doing after this. I don't know why I'm doing this. And I know I've got a little while left yet, as much as I know that time will fly. Things will never be the same. But there's still lots of room for things to be good.
So, I'm billeting. For the first weekend in way to long I've been able to live a little more spontaneously. It's been exactly what it's meant to be so far, a break. I've biked around, down jungle-like trails, without a helmet too (gasp! Final in security). I went swimming in an incredibly cold lake (without a lifeguard) to escape incredibly muggy, if not that warm, weather. I biked down to Extra to try the mento/diet Coke experiment. And all of this wasn't planned, plotted, and discussed at a housemeeting. I certainly didn't fill out any protocols. I spent a whole morning journaling, stayed in church till it was finished, and ate buttertarts for breakfast. So much for wanting to go do stuff on billeting. Thanks for the chance to do nothing.
