Last summer I cried every single day. I felt with each passing day came another uphill battle, and I wondered if I was ever going to get better. I felt I must be weak and broken if I was having such a struggle to just be happy.
Because of last summer I became a new person. I went into the summer angry, negative, and completely ungrateful for way too much. I came out someone who was much more positive, caring, hopeful, and trusting.
Last summer I allowed myself to listen and be changed by God, truly, for the first time.
For those of you who don't know, I spent last summer in Alaska. Some of what I just said might seem to make sense to you now, because as one of my favorite professors once said "things happen in Alaska!". Alaska is a crazy beautiful place, and it feels almost magical when you get there (I describe it a bit more in my post "Losing God" if you're interested...this post is going to be somewhat similar to that one, just a warning). Things... things just happen in Alaska, people are changed in Alaska, that just goes with the nature of being Alaska. If you ever want to know the details, ask me about it sometime, I'd love to talk about it with you. But right now I want to focus on something a little different.
So when I left, everything felt a bit like a let down. I was going back to the plain old lower 48, and I knew going into it I was going to lose some of what I had gained. After all, I was leaving Alaska, the place where things happen.
Slowly over the course of the year I lost the woman I had become in Alaska. I went back to being negative, to neglecting my time in the Bible and with God, I started closing up again, I began to see only the worst in myself. Hopefully I was not back to the way I had been at the end of the year leading into my Alaskan summer, but I certainly had gone back a few steps.
And you know what? I think I almost believed it was because of where I was. I was back in the boring place I went to school, back to the town I grew up in--of course that was not it at all, but I'll get back to that in a bit.
This summer is the first summer since I started college that I will be spending at home. Back in plain old New England, surrounded by people who have known me since I was born and, yes, a few new people. And I'm pretty sure because I came back here I had this idea in my mind that this summer was in no way going to change me. I've spent 21 years of my life here, what amazing thing could possibly happen that would transform me the way the summer before had? I don't believe I really thought God would be moving much in this place, or that God ever does.
Then God reminded me of something.
The other day I was watching the sky, procrastinating as I often do, and I realized something. New England is beautiful. The sunrises and sunsets, the trees in the fall, the animals in the summer, the stars at night, they are all so, so beautiful. Looking around here makes it so clear God is an artist, something I first thought of while I was in Alaska.
Every day in Alaska I looked around and marveled at how the hands that made the mountains and sea around me had also made me. The other day I realized the same hands that make the beautiful sights around me (and yes, they are just as beautiful, just a little bit different), made the ones in Alaska, and me.
The other day I realized I don't think God is as present in some places as God is in others. I didn't expect to find God here, at home, because I did not see anything special about it. I expected this summer to just be "normal" as the rest of my life is, so I did not even open up my heart to be moved by God.
I think we often think God needs to work in these huge and crazy ways to actually make a difference. When we are surrounded by things we see as "normal", we don't expect to find God, so we do not look for God. We do not open ourselves up to God. Going into this summer I did not expect anything big or exciting to happen, so I prepared myself to go a summer unchanged. And in doing that I think my heart started to become unchangeable.
What a waste! What a complete misunderstand of who God is. And I can't believe I even let a few weeks pass like that (though, if we're honest, I've probably been in this mindset since I left AK). It wasn't the physical location I was in God was unable to move in, it was in my cemented and stubborn heart.
And dang. I am so so sorry about that. I am sorry to the people who have watched me become negative. I am sorry to the people who have tried to help me see the positive side of things, and just been shut down. And I am so sorry to my God who knew I always had the potential to do something big, even when I truly believed God couldn't. Because of something as stupid a physical location.
Yes, I am not spending this summer in Alaska, I am not doing anything overly "exciting" like working at a whale watching company where I get to go on free tours whenever I can, with people who are amazing in ways I can't even start to fit in this sentence. But hey. I am spending the summer in New England, doing some pretty mundane but wicked awesome things, with some pretty fantastic people, some old, some new. And God is going to move in my heart. Because I am going to be looking for God every day. I am going to be fighting for God, I am going to be fighting to be the woman God made me to be.
Even in plain old New England. And I hope that if you find yourself somewhere you think is boring, you do too.
Hey as always, I'll be praying for you guys, remember you are loved, I'll talk to you soon :-).
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