I Will Miss the Days We Had

"Tell me something, give me hope for the night
We don't know how we feel
We're just praying that we're doing this right
Though that's not the way it seems
Summer gone, now winter's on its way. I will miss the days we had"
-Winter Song, The Head and The Heart

This is the song that I've been listening to on repeat the past few days. As I packed up my room I listened to it over and over. I don't think there's a song that could better fit where I am as I close my time at HoneyRock and return to Wheaton to student teach.

I don't know how I feel.
I'm excited to be back in Wheaton, to start student teaching next week.
I'm sad that I had to say goodbye to my team from the summer; some for just a few weeks until they come back to Wheaton for the fall, others for I don't know how long.
I'm relieved that I never have to schedule camper activities again, and I will never have to spend day after day, hour after hour in the HoneyRock computer lab again.
I rejoice in the friendships I made, in being reunited with campers from last year, in the memories made.
I mourn the difficulty of the summer, but celebrate the growth it brought.

Perhaps it's not right to say I don't know how I feel, but rather I don't know how to feel with so many emotions in my head. So bear with me as I process through what the past 13 weeks have been.

"We're just praying that we're doing this right though that's not the way it seems."
This is my summer in a nutshell. Over and over again, I felt like I was messing up, that I was failing at my job, that I wasn't doing things right. And I would pray, trusting that God would redeem my mistakes. And I would continue to feel like a failure. But my prayer throughout the summer that I was doing something right, even though it didn't seem like it.

One night of the last session, I was listening to the song Beautiful Things. "All around hope is springing up from this old ground. Out of chaos life is being found in you. You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of the dust. You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of us." God makes beautiful things out the most broken, messed up things, including me.

Listening to the song reminded me of the first night at HoneyRock. We had some time to journal and prepare for the summer. I had written out the lyrics of another song:
"I lean not on my own understanding, my life is in the hands of the maker of heaven.
I give it all to you God, trusting that you'll make something beautiful out of me."

That was the attitude I entered the summer with, and it was my prayer for the summer. I didn't always hold to it in the midst of the summer, but it's where I'm at now-God makes beautiful things. He's made beautiful things out of my work this summer, he still is now, and he will continue to do so.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of this summer. There was so much more growth, so many more memories, but I'm going to leave this post here.