Thursday, August 21, 2008

Something New

Staying here in Colorado has left me open to experiencing different things. Here at the office, for more than a few hours each day I am the only one here. Now kids don't stop by to see me on the way to the mall or wherever they're going to buy clothes or truck accessories. Now I have empty spots on my calendar, and free time! Now I feel a whole lot less useful.

The most striking new experience, though, is being left.

Both of the two previous years, I left before any of the teens went to their first years of college, before any of the college-age left either. I got to leave my little world here intact, confident that it would be exactly the same when I returned, except for being dusted and tidied up a bit every now and then.

But this summer I came back to everything being different. And now I am here watching my friends leave to experience a whole universe of New Things.

Mary left Saturday. Tawni left this morning. Tracey leaves tomorrow, but stopped over to say goodbye this morning. And since they've been some of the older kids in the Youth Group for as long as I've been here, they are the ones to whom I've gotten closest. I've depended on them. And now they leave.

Frankly, it is a lot easier to be the one doing the leaving.

1 comment:

Mary said...

It's always easier to do the leaving, I agree. Many times I have had to come home to extremely different conditions, yet I want them to be how I remembered them, so that's how I treat them. In doing this, I am rejecting change.
Moral of the story: I realized that I fear a lot of change, but not all.