As I type this, I'm sitting up in the leaders' lounge at Pali Mountain outside of Lake Arrowhead because I was lucky enough to be invited to come on LMU's First Year Retreat this weekend to help out and be support staff. It's a bit surreal being here; I came on this retreat as a college freshman back in 2008, and, in true Youth Ministry fashion, wished I could lead every year, but was never able to. So, when the staff leader asked if I'd be willing to come up and help out, I jumped at the chance to relax, hang out and help out in the mountains for the weekend.
According to the staff leader, the retreat is still in the same place it's been since forever, which means this is the location that I came to as a freshman six years ago. It's strange up here; they tell me this is the same place but nothing looks the same. Or at least, things look familiar, but not exactly right so I'm not sure if I'm remembering things or remembering pictures I've seen of things. Either way, it's surreal to be back in a place that signaled the beginning of so much. And it's telling that this feels like the beginning of a whole 'nother chapter of my life.
I keep thinking: I should be in Atlanta right now.
Or, I guess, I can vividly see an entire alternate universe where I'm pulling into the dorm parking lot of the Savannah College of Art and Design after a week-long road trip with my mom. I kind of wonder what we would have done on the way. Where I would've been able to get her to agree to stop to do touristy things, what music I would have shuffled through as we drove, how the a/c would have faired with 500 miles of driving per day with the car packed to the brim.
I would have started grad school on Monday.
I don't know what would have happened after that, what classes would have been like after two years off. I guess I had never really thought about what came AFTER, and by the time I would have started to think about "after", I ended up not having to consider it. So it's kinda crazy being up here in Lake Arrowhead, helping out on a First Year Retreat and knowing that I was almost a first year all over again.
To some extent, I still am a first year anyways, so it's kind of really powerful that I'm here. It's funny to hear the leader talks about where they were freshman year and how much they've changed since freshman year, especially since I'm watching them through the lens of a semi-recent grad. This year is the last year I know people who are in school when I was in school (i.e. they were freshmen when I was a senior). Knowing some of the seniors is an interesting perspective, considering I've known them since they were wee young impressionable freshmen. While I've been wandering around L.A. my babies have grown up! It's nice to see their growth, nice to know that they've touched so many lives. It's also so interesting (and downright weird at some points) to see the leadershp positions they've taken up, considering that the ones I knew have matured so much now.
Most of the people here don't know who I am, just that I'm scurrying around whenever Christine asks me to do something and that the student coordinators seem to know me. Not to toot my own horn, but I know that I had some sort of impact in Campus Ministry and in CSA while a student. So, it's sort of surreal to see how life moves on in a good way. I like knowing that the future of LMU student life is in capable hands and that said hands are passing it along to good people in the future (and that the cycle will hopefully continue for along while after that).
Starting over, starting new is always tough and scary and nerve-wracking and a whole bunch of other adjectives I can't think of. But watching these kids (because, let's be honest, they're adults by law, but kids in every other sense of the word) who are starting a new life in college ... it gives me hope for my future. Not that I'm going to be someone totally brand new and different now that I have a job and my own apartment, but that I can always strive to be the best version of who I want to be. I don't need to be doing exactly what I think I should be doing at this very moment.
Instead, I feel like the lesson of this weekend is that everything takes time. It took time to cultivate these freshmen into the people who applied to LMU, got in, and decided to come on the First Year Retreat. I know I want to be successful and doing what I love, there's just no easy way of getting there (general hint for life: there never is). Sometimes, deserving people get a good break, and sometimes they don't -- as for me, I have to take the long way around, and that MUST be something that I accept. Not in the sense that every day has to be rainbows and sunshine, but I need to remember that everything in the way of me getting what I want and doing what I want is a lesson that I need to learn. a lesson that might hurt, a lesson that might take years longer than I hope it does, but a lesson all the same.
Whatever that lesson is, this is my mantra: patience, self; the important things take time.
--Tiffany
No comments:
Post a Comment