Challenge. Accepted.

As some of you know, I recently returned from backpacking in Colordao. Yes, that’s right. I went backpacking. If you know me well (or know me even a little bit) you know that I am not an outdoorsy person and have camped a whole 2 times in my life. I know nothing about the outdoors except for the minimal knowledge I gained making a video about no trace camping in Environmental Science.

This all came to be when I met up with one of my YoungLife girls for a nice cup of coffee one evening. I had been trying to convince her to go to Colorado to go to Crooked Creek (a really sweet resort type thing) and she had other plans. She came in with the flyer, put it down in front of me and essentially told me that this is what we were doing instead. I agreed fairly easily and wasn’t sure why to be honest. The power of high schoolers is pretty intense stuff I guess. I agreed sometime around February I believe and we left at the end of July. That’s a lot of time for me to worry about a lot of things. And so I did.

I procrastinated in packing for as long as possible. I packed everything I would need an hour before we left. Why be prepared for something that scares the crap out of you? The months leading up for the trip, I tossed around jokes about how nervous I was and how much I really didn’t want to go, but knew in my heart that those weren’t jokes. I don’t take risks. I don’t accept challenges. And I don’t backpack. My mind was numb for most of the day as we were preparing to leave. If I don’t think about what I’m doing, I can’t freak out about it.

We loaded the bus for our lovely 24 hour bus ride. I’m all for road trips and can handle being in the car for long periods of time, but 24 hours is a little extreme. We were already playing games within the first hour of the trip…that’s bad news in my mind. I like to wait as long as I can to be so bored that I need things to entertain myself with. Not with this group. We played games, we talked, we laughed until we cried (well until I cried), and we slept some.

 *Note. We have THE BEST YoungLife kids. I could not have been more proud to be their leader. More to come on that.

I’ll summarize the entire trip because I could go on and on with details about our week. We whitewater rafted on Monday which was something I also never thought I would do. I did it. And I took the harder of the two options and survived it. We paddled 10 miles down the Arkansas River with our new best friend, Jay. I was with my 3 girls who were on the trip. We didn’t let the boys go with us mostly because I wanted to be successful without them! The next day, we loaded up our packs and headed out on the trail for our 4 day adventure. It was an adventure. I have never felt more challenged, exhausted, frustrated, or excited in my life. The scenery was beautiful…obviously. We hiked to the top of a mountain and back down in one day, we went through rivers, we went over fields of rocks, and through forests.

Here’s where I brag about how great our group was. There were 3 girls, 6 guys, a female guide, a male guide, Luke and myself. There was not one river, large rock, fallen tree, or any other obstacle that I had to cross by myself. There was constantly one of our guys asking who needed help, what they could do, and generally making sure that we were ok. The group as a whole was respectful, open, and honest. We were all broken together and gained so much from one another. Speaking for myself, I just made 10 new really great friends on this trip. I feel blessed to know them and be in their lives.

I learned a lot about myself over the week. I can do things that scare the crap out of me. I spend a lot of time telling myself negative things. “I can’t do it.” “I won’t make it.” “I’m not athletic enough for this.” The list goes on and on. Here’s the truth. It doesn’t hurt to give it a try. I may not be at the front of the pack. I may not go as quickly as everyone else. And I might need to stop 72 times when we are going uphill. But here is the moral…I made it. I did it. I accomplished a number of things I never thought I could.

So thank you Gillian. Thank you Jessica. Thank you Megan. Thank you for opening up to me and teaching me things about myself that I couldn’t have learned without you. Thanks for letting me into your lives and giving me the chance to grow with you. I am so proud of the 3 of you. You are all beautiful young ladies with so many great things in your future.

And thank you boys…Jonah, Tyler, Bjorn, Timmy, Tommy, and Nate. Thank you for doing such a great job taking care of all of us. Thank you for the respect that you have for people and your love for life. Keep taking on the challenges of life and conquering them. 

Sometimes You Can Be Proven Wrong

Whoa folks. It’s been awhile hasn’t it? The last couple of months have really changed for Luke and I. One of the biggest changes lately…we bought a house. Yeah. What?! I usually don’t believe it either when I pull into my garage and then walk in my front door. It’s a beautiful place to call home and we are so excited to not live in the apartment anymore.  Someday I will post pictures-I promise!

Another thing we love about having the house is that we have more room to host fun events. For example, Luke is currently in the basement watching the NFL draft with a bunch of guys. It’s a blessing to have the space to have people over whenever.

Some of you may know that Luke and I both lead YoungLife out here. We absolutely love our high school students! I won’t speak for Luke at all, but I know that before this current semester, I was pretty half-hearted about YoungLife. In fact, there were multiple times I thought about quitting. Somehow I was pretty sure I was better off as “Luke’s wife” rather than a leader. I’ve got plenty of things I could share with high school girls about things they should and shouldn’t do in high school and beyond that, but none of it seemed good enough to share. Maybe that’s because I am a downer on myself and was confident that none of them would like me and I was just going to be that outcast girl that none of the girls liked.

I’ll tell you what. They proved me wrong. My girls are some of the best I have ever met. They are kind, caring, and so willing to be open and honest. I eagerly look forward to seeing them every Monday and secretly (well not so secretly anymore) hope that they will want to hang out at some other time during the week. These girls have convinced me to go backpacking in Colorado this summer along with numerous other things outside my comfort zone. They are intelligent and so incredibly talented. I cherish the time I get to spend with them and appreciate their kind words and compassion on my life.

If I had to guess about what my life would look like when I was in high school, I can assure you it wouldn’t have been this. I’ll tell you what though-I still adore a good conversation about who likes who late at night! Thank you girls for opening up to me and accepting me! You all are wonderful!

I'm Only Human

I have been neglecting blogging lately. And by neglecting, I more so mean avoiding. I’m not really sure of the reason, but I think it might have something to with not facing the ugly truths I realize when I blog. I’ve been going back through reading some of the things I’ve blogged about and most of them are about some flaw I’ve noticed in myself and how I intend to fix that. Lately I haven’t felt too insightful into my life.

I’ve been describing my life over the last few months as a snow globe that a small child is holding. I feel like my whole life is continually being shook up and I can’t really hold on to anything. It’s funny though…there are a number of things in my life that are really stable and going really well. I have a full time job that I love and look forward to going to every day. It may be demanding and emotionally draining, but each day I feel blessed that I get to work with such a great team. I really feel like they care about me and appreciate me. I am blessed with a husband who understands my crazy brain and usually just lets things go. He reminds me often that I can’t control the world and that I don’t need to please everybody around me.

So what don’t I want to face in life? Why don’t I want to dig a little deeper into my life and see what’s really going on? FEAR. I’m scared of what I’ll begin to realize about myself if I do that. I drove by a car accident on my way to work the other day that looked eerily similar to the one I was in over the summer. I spent the next 3 minutes of my drive feeling panicked and like it was all going to happen again. Lucky for me, when I got to work I had to spend my morning typing about questions about PTSD from traumatic events such as car accidents. I think that’s when it hit me. I have never taken the time to process a lot of serious life events. Seeing my sister unconscious and not being sure if she was alive or not was definitely traumatic. I think I just breezed past it because I needed to be the one who was ok. I’m a people pleaser. I like people to feel ok and like things are fine even if that means I’m not. I quickly emailed Luke and asked if I was crazy for getting so worked up over just seeing a car accident. Des is fine. I am fine. And I’ve always just figured it was time to move on from it.

This is it though. This is where I’m deciding it’s time for me. It’s ok that I can’t make everyone happen. Sometimes it’s ok to put yourself first. It’s time for a little self care for this girl. I’m going to take some time to process through some stuff that’s happened. It doesn’t make me crazy, it makes me human.