At Two AM,

It is a firm testament to God and the work he has done in me that upon stumbling into my room a few minutes ago and finding a war zone I did not lose my cool and drop down dead.

No, God allowed me to overlook the lacrosse balls scattered across the floor and the clothes flung to and fro. God allowed me the strength to get to the light switch and shut it off so I could just stop thinking about it and finally FINALLY begin sorting through a months worth of emails.

God allowed me to find a song on Itunes that I can sing tomorrow in church without revealing my strained voice and God allowed me the strength to jot this down. Tomorrow I may try to use my limited skill to describe the love/hate relationship I have with Teen Week, but for now, I'm just going to sleep.

The most important "us",

Or should it be called the most important "we"?


We all have these us's and we's in our lives. We have the us that is our family. We have the us that is our friends. We have the us which is our country.

We can find them all over. The us that is the people in line at the grocery store. The us of two people sitting at a bus stop with their gazes directed straight ahead and not moving.

One of the most important us's in my life is a fairly large us. It is the us which is made up by the youth of the LB. The people who I have traveled with the camps and rally's. The us that has been part of epic snowball fights as well as lessons that have moved me to tears.

We have our own hierarchy (Norwegians please step up) but we are, at our very core, an US.

Hangin' with my Gnomies,

Prior to last week,

I spent everyday with my nose in the Want Ads hoping to find a more steady form of income than that which I am currently employing. I would send about three emails a day with my resume attached waiting for something to happen. Because I had an intuitive feeling something would.

However, I packed my bags and came up to Tusc last week without having heard back from a single person. I had questioned how this is possible but, not having too much experience with this method of job searching I didn't questioned.

Now, I checked the file holding my resume several times. I edited it at points thinking a tweak here and a tweak there would make someone bite.

Yesterday I accessed email for the first time in a week. I had there, in a row, replies from all those emails saying the same thing. That when they had tried to access my resume it had come up blank on their computers.

Now, I do hope that this time my imagination is not taking advantage of my gullibility. But is it too much to believe that God wanted me here at Tusc this summer and he didn't want any job or any amount of money to interfere with it?

What are you, silly?

I am sunburned. Not badly. I am the kind of sunburned where you were outside for a week straight and you thought you were brown enough to chill at the pool for an afternoon without sun screen on. Tomorrow it will probably be brown, and I will remember all that I love about having blond hair in the summer time.

I was eleven years old for six days and I had to remember that, yes, the Jonas Brothers are important to some people. I sat on the edge of a dunk tank and flinched every time a ball was thrown at me.

I was reminded, daily, by the screaming voices of my campers at session, that Jesus is my best friend, and nothing will ever change that. One little girl raised her hand in my devotion and said, "When is accepting Christ into my heart on the schedule because I don't want to miss it." Simultaneously down the hall a twelve year old girl had an orange squeezed out into her hair.

I am blissfully happy in this moment, and its extraordinary because nothing has changed. I always thought the world and circumstances would have to shift in order for me to be this degree of joyful. But in the midst of my six days as an eleven year old I realized something.
My life is pretty great.

The shape of my soul,

It's coming.
Oh, the thoughts I will think. Oh, the words I will write.
Junior Week 2008.