Dfocus: The End

This room is really quiet without seven other girls giggling in the background. I'm not sure what to do with it.

So I'm home. Not just to do laundry or eat dinner before heading back to my cabin for a snugglefest or running out with my crazy friends for a midnight escapade, but to sleep and stay like I'm supposed to. It's lonely. On top of that, I'm purposefully listening to sad music, going through pictures, and refusing to fix the fact that I'm sleep deprived in order to ride this end-of-the-summer emotional tidal wave. Wah wah wah.

God did things this summer that I was told to expect but didn't necessarily think would happen.

First and foremost He's made Himself huge and real to me in a way that I've never experienced before. I learned how to present not only my circumstances, but most importantly my attitudes in order to learn what He was teaching me through the circumstances that I used to only pray would go away. He became my fulfillment more than ever before--something I've caught snatches of in the past but never rested in. I saw this especially at the end (that means...this week), when He blatantly told me no to something I really wanted and it took less than two days for me to stop wrestling with Him over it. That's Him giving me His mind, just like I'm learning to ask Him to.

Second, He gave me deep relationships with people who want only to follow Him and push me to do the same. People who I will not only miss, but will write letters to and drive several hours to visit. People who I WILL see in heaven. My cabinmates blessed me in a deep way as we learned to love and snuggle with each other for ten weeks. My small group surprised me with random words of wisdom and encouragement. God even allowed me to make friends with boys who showed me love and grace in a brotherly way that most will not--something I specifically asked for.

There's nothing like walking outside and seeing/yelling at friends out on their porches. Or coming into a cabin where three girls are stacked upon one another on the couch. Or absolutely rejoicing in free, cheesy Pigeon Forge experiences. Or worshiping loudly and openly while holding hands with friends on either side of you. Or realizing that Jesus loves you more than anyone else ever will and that He's showing you just a tiny glimmer of that love through a beautiful, blossoming community.

I was challenged and loved.

I am overjoyed to be holding onto Jesus by the hand while he He teaches me to trust Him one step at a time. 

The cryfest will continue on and off over the next few days, but I'm so comforted by the fact that when it comes to people who love Jesus, it's never the end. This is the time when my growth will really be put to the test and I'm so thankful that He will never leave me, regardless of the changes He puts in my still-short life.

Seasons are beautiful, and this was a particularly breathtaking summer.  

Dfocus: Part 2

Hannah kindly pointed out to me that my last post title contained the word "Dfoucs" which isn't actually a word at all. ESL moment. Sorry.

I am currently sitting at home on my own laptop, watching Emily Skaar paint a box as we listen to the sound of the dryer humming in the background. It's nice to actually be close to home for the summer.

The summer is going by in a blur, just as I thought it would. It made me sad at first, but now I'm content with it. God's taken me through so many programs like this where deep relationships are formed and left. I'd be really depressed if I didn't know that one day I won't have to say goodbye to anyone anymore.

The girls in my cabin--number 6--are nearly as precious to me as the ladies of The Fritz. We live up on a hill, so we are a bit separated from everyone else and have called ourselves the Sexy Seis. A lot of snuggling goes on in there and nothing remains hidden between us. It's a little frightening.

I've made friends with some Chinese girls who take pictures at Dollywood and Splash Country. I'm kind of amazed at God for bringing us together because he KNEW how much I wanted to minister to the foreign university students this summer and I've never had real Chinese friends before. They are so cute--I just want to put them in my purse and take them everywhere I go.

Tonight I am going to my seventh free showing of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. I am an unabashed fan girl who is not afraid to dance through the entire thing. It's kind of like Disney, the Bible, and rainbow dance parties all mixed into a two hour experience. The Chinese girls love it more than I do now and I make it my personal duty to get as many people as addicted to it as I am.

My prayers are changing from, "God, make me more loving....show me where you want me to go....help me do this..." to "Jesus, make me look more like you and make me teachable and pliable so that you can change me deep inside. Do what you want in me. I can do nothing good on my own, it all has to be you." He's so big--it's truly amazing.

I've finally seen the full redneck side of my hometown and it shines in all its rotten toothed, extra syllabled, hairy-chested, stretch-marked glory. Last summer I had a Uganda accent whenever I left my house. This summer it's a country accent that comes out every time I stand behind a cash register, drenched in sweat with the smell of Co-Cola and hawtdogs filling my nostrils as I smile at customers with all of my pearly whites still in tact. Thank you, Splash Country foods.

*Sigh* there's too little time to really type up this experience. All I know is that this is EXACTLY what was perfect for me this summer. Why do I ever doubt that my father's plans are better than my own?

Dfoucs: Part 1

In the twenty minutes or so I have to blog, I'm going to try to tell you about my experience--so far--at Discipleship Focus 2011. I will not be successful. That is ok.

During each summer of my college career, God has shown me some overarching theme/big lesson that is important for me to learn. 2009 at camp: He works through brokenness. 2010 in Uganda: I need to lean on Him daily, everywhere. 2011 at Dfocus: "Look at me, Laura! I am really big and I LOVE YOU!!"

I've been a "real" Christian since I was ten and loved Jesus since before I can remember. Part of me thought I had this walk all figured out. WRONG. The intense study we are doing at Dfocus has gone very deep into some simple concepts that I never thought about so much before and the foundations of my relationship with Him are being shifted and shaken.

One huge truth I've seen especially in these last few weeks? God is love (have you ever REALLY thought about the implications of that??). Because He is love, nothing is more glorious to Him than showing love and being loved in return. "Bringing God glory", which I always knew was the purpose of my life, is not really something I have to do. I don't have to be concerned about going out and showing people how big and great God is--He can do that all by Himself. It's just about loving Him. A lot. And his love is HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE.

I think I'm falling in love.

But just because I'm doing all this concentrated I-love-God stuff doesn't mean it doesn't get a little crazy around here. There are 53 college students living on a campground together with access to free stuff in Pigeon Forge. It's impossible for it not to get crazy. I would put up pictures, but my home internet is being as slow as a snake in winter. I'll make a list instead.

Hillbilly night at Dixie Stampede.

Stabucks. A lot. 

The Track.

Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. 

Dance parties. 

Gatlinburg Motion Ride.

Donuts. 

Ultimate Frisbee. 

Hammocks. 

Skin---I mean, swimming. 

Froyo.

Neon Cosmic Bowling.

Jurassic Boat Ride. 

Mini Golf. 

Neon Bowling. 

Walmart.

Spooning. 

It's a great time. My cabinmates are hilarious--Baba Larve is now an established member and one of my roommates also likes to play the part of a small Mexican boy named Oscar. They make a great team. We hung a hammock from bunk to bunk in my bedroom. The girls in my small group like to dive into deep discussion, and I'm all about that. It's also nice to finally have some guy friends that aren't befriending me because they want to creep on me later. Genuinely nice Christian boys that show me the love of Christ in a brotherly way---that is a beautiful and rare thing. I'm also learning to buy groceries like a grownup and cook for myself. 

Oh yeah, and I have a job working all over Splash Country in different concessions booths, since part of dfocus is that everyone works at Dollywood or Splash Country. Because of this job, I never want to eat hotdogs or nachos again and I will NEVER get a tattoo. 

I've got seven weeks left of this adventure. Yee-haw.

Dfocus FTW!

Discipleship Focus starts tomorrow. 

YESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!

My bags are not packed, my clothes are not washed, my shopping is not done, and I have a list of stuff that needs to be crossed off before I can take the ten-minute drive to the campground where I will be living for the rest of the summer. I. AM. SO. READY.

My May-time adventures have been sweet, though. In the last few weeks I have: 

-prepared for, gone to, and teared up at my brother's graduation. 

-given a Mongolian boy my number. 

-gone on a family hike and held hands with my sister as we chatted, sloshing through the mud and rain. 

-seen my missionary aunt and uncle for the first time in three years. 

-gone to a benefit concert thrown by two of my friends. 

-made a lot of coffee, the fancy way.

-been swimming roughly every other day. 

-turned two shades darker than my regular peach color. 

-been shopping. A lot. 

-had homemade ice cream. 

-shared laughs and heartaches with dear friends. 

-watched an infomercial for the genie bra. ("Bra-vo, genie bra!")

-written a book entitled "Puppy Laura and Lisa Lion's Fun Party"

-mailed a package to my kids in Uganda.

-babysat little second cousins who I had never met.

-seen the new Pirates movie.

-finished two scrapbooks.

-read Peter and the Starcatchers and A Little Princess.

-been awesome.

But now it's time to get on with things. A job, fifty new friends, dance parties all the time, ultimate frisbee, hiking, rocking chairs, and general silliness await me for the next ten weeks. So does the chance to deepen my relationship with my Savior, which is something I have not been doing enough of lately. 

I also won't have a laptop for ten weeks, so I'm not sure how this blog will come along. Oh well.

Let the fun begin!

Limbo

I'm in limbo. 

No, not the embarrassing kind with that stupid stick that my inflexibility will never allow me to win. Limbo is that place between places and it's really not a bad place to be. It's been 20 days since we were told to leave school and there are 14 days left until Discipleship Focus begins. What's this mean for Laura? A plethora of coffee dates, sleepovers, princess books, and being broke.

Oh, and a lot of time with my mom. The one in the middle--that's her. Usually she's not quite so gangster, but I thought it would show you a more interesting side of her personality.

My mom is the person you want to have around when you're making a joke, because she will laugh at anything. ANYTHING. She's usually pretty sweet and mild and gets excited easily. There are a lot of times when she is unintentionally funny. For example:

"Do you like tomatoes? Dad can't eat tomatoes....I miss tomatoes."

"That cat is weird--like it's been smoking crack or something."

(hold on--my mom knows what crack is??)

I've also had a lot of quality time with my sister (who is tall). 

Notice the word "quality" here. Our time together usually consists of her talking a lot and me pretending to listen. This time, we've had meaningful interaction. YES! Mom is determined to keep her away from boys in high school at any cost, and I am determined to help her make wise decisions concerning boys by telling her about my own past mistakes. 

And I'm having a lot of time with Morgan, especially since she is parent-less for ten days and needs a supervisor....even though I'm younger than she is....

And we do stuff like this:

These are the books I've read since being home:

And these are some of the movies I've watched:

  

I'm such a grownup. 

Of course, I've done more than sit around. I've visited friends, gone hiking, had dinner with Thai students, cleaned and organized (well, kind of), done my sister's hair for a banquet, gone shopping for summer clothes, finished two scrapbooks...and some other stuff. Most importantly, I've enjoyed spending time with the people I love, getting a summer break with them before my summer really begins. 

Without this dumb thing:

Princess Ruby

In the last week, I have acquired three sunburns. THREE. I even have sunscreen fingerprints from where I tried to unsuccessfully protect myself from sunburn. A few days ago, an old man accosted me as I sat out in the sunshine at Starbucks and told me to get in the shade before I developed melanoma. I really don't think I have that, but all this red skin has made me think back to my childhood, when I would go to the waterpark for a day, turn into an absolute lobster, and play "Princess Ruby" for the rest of the week.

Anyway, what everyone wants to know now is, "How did the rest of crazy week turn out?"

I'll tell you. It became excellent. 

Sunburn-Monday (hooray for reading outside) became shishkabob night with my old RA and her best friend.

On Tuesday, Alyssa and I went to see the new Jane Eyre, which was quite a sad, dark shocker for the girl who's never read the book (even though her English major friends won't let her live it down). That was when we got the call that power had returned to the house on the mountain and made plans to head for Chatty the next day.

And that night we played Wii. This was my Wii Me--or WiiMii--or WeeMee--whatever. I actually changed it's gender-confused name to "Vanester".

Wednesday and Thursday were a blur of babysitting and good-byes. Little Ariel (you remember her, right? Ok, so her name isn't really Ariel, but I kind of wish it was.) graciously had me over for dinner on Thursday night and it was delicious (actually, I would say her mom Amy did most of the cooking and deserves the credit). It was also a time of shoving everything I left in my dorm room during evacuation into my car. Beaulah was not pleased.

On Friday, Alyssa's family hosted a pre-graduation dinner at the Terminal. You know what that meant? FREE SALMON CAKES, STEAK, AND CHOCOLATE CAKE FOR LAURA.

The real occasion, of course, was graduation on Saturday. My high school graduation was fun--they had to call less than 50 names to come up and get their diplomas. It doesn't work that way with college graduations. At college graduations, over 300 people have to come up and get diplomas. That's a lot of people.

Sunday was Mother's Day. Most people go out to eat or see a movie on Mother's Day. The Love Family spent the day opening and cleaning our pool (hello, sunburn #3). Audrey and I (as the good daughters we are) also made mom some special brownies (not those special brownies, you weirdo), cut her some roses, and made her a book.

(That piece of chocolate in the middle has "Happy Mother's Day" inscribed on it via kitchen knife)

So Mother's Day was a success. 

Now I have to figure out what to do with the rest of the month as my funds rapidly decrease. At the moment, I'm crossing my fingers that some desperate Sevierville mother is frantically searching for my number as I type, or that my own mother will give me some money for cleaning windows and vacuuming around the house (aka that thing called "allowance" that I thought I would never need again). 

In the meantime, maybe my crocodile-leather, ruby-red skin will smooth out into a beautiful, mellow brown. 

Here's to hoping. 

The week of storms, filth, and the best dogs in the world.

Here I sit on a leather sofa, watching a show about cake while the best dog in the world pokes my arm with her wet, black snout, begging for my attention. Ah, someone else's home sweet home. It almost feels like the last week didn't happen--the week of that awful, ridiculous storm that threw a wrench in the plans of thousands of people across the South.

It began well. I came back from Easter Break ready for two more weeks of school. My roommate and I had another wonderful Twin Twosday.  **inserting cute photo here**

On Tuesday night, I looked at the weather app on my phone and thought to myself, "Oh, some thunderstorms...that means I'll have curly hair tomorrow. No big deal." The next morning, I woke up to a stomach ache and the sound of my RA banging on the door and yelling something about a tornado warning and get down to the basement right now and panic panic panic. Best start to a day I've ever had.

We went down the the basement six times that day--spent most of the day down there, in fact. My legs got buff from climbing up and down 5 1/2 flights of stairs half a dozen times. But the ladies of The Fritz were prepared with pillows, blankets, homework, entertainment, snacks, and teddy bears.

Comfy, no?
Then we lost our regular power as well as generator power--but the latter only on our floor because my RA blew a fuse. The Fritz was dark for the next three days and looked much like the set of a horror film. And then they (the powers that be) told us that we were running low on water so don't take showers please, even though all of you smell like dogs. 


The next day, my roommate and I went down the mountain to survey the damage down below and stock up on supplies at Walmart. Ends up we didn't need to do that. At 2:30 that afternoon, as I was studying for my exams, all of campus received an email saying that we only had enough water left for a day and everyone needed to get off campus ("evacuate" was the calming word used in the email)--for the year--by 3:00 the next afternoon. Skip cleaning day, exams, end of the year goodbyes, just throw everything in a bag and GET OUT.

AAAH. 

Campus went into mass chaos. Nobody was quite sure what to do. We were all calling our parents, figuring out how to get home, knocking down the doors of storage to put away items that were too big to get into the car, and running 50 pound items that would fit in the car down four flights of stairs before daylight went out.

By that evening, campus had officially run out of water--yes, less than a day after the email was sent. Port-a-potties were put up in parking lots and bottled water was distributed. Everyone was greasy and smelly.

After sunset that evening, trying to do anything productive was useless. So The Fritz spent our night well by chasing each other down with flashlights, having a glowstick dance party on the veranda, and sitting around telling stories. My roommate and I stayed up way too late trying to savor our last night of living in the same room after three years together. We were upset about being jipped a week.

The next day was a blur. Somehow the room got clean and rearranged and all of my belongings made their way into bags. Then I was in the car with Alyssa, heading to her house in Atlanta. We had decided to go there for the weekend and then go back to her house on the mountain to wait for graduation on Saturday. Despite the crazy day, we were renewed by showers (FINALLY CLEAN!!) so that we could then watch the royal wedding {Alyssa INSISTED I go back and insert that} before going out for froyo and bowling. Yay.

Saturday afternoon was spent at Ikea, and today was spent finishing every last piece of homework. I was thanking my lucky stars exams were cancelled. I was also QUITE enjoying the company of my two new favorite dogs, Baron and Daisy.

Today we also heard that the power at Alyssa's house on the mountain will be out for another week and that the water is undrinkable, so we will be spending the rest of the week in this big house with comfy chairs. needy dogs, and delicious food. Of course, this means not getting to spend time with people who are still in Chatty, which makes me sad.

I still feel like ends are untied. All my work is done, which officially makes me a senior in college (HOL-Y SMOKES). Some of my belongings are still on campus and I will be going to get them this weekend. And then I will be home for the summer.

I thank the Lord that our campus was spared, though I ache for those who were hit. And even though He threw us all for a loop right at the end of the semester, I know He has the best in mind. He always does.