Snaps

This blog is more or less written for the girls as a reminder and memory of this day. I hope you parents and friends enjoy it anyway!

Today was another service project day. Team White painted an incessant number of bricks with welfare paint that resembled milk and water. Team Blue visited an orphanage that housed hope where none was expected to be found. Team Red dished meals to the poor that had both nutritional and spiritual value.

Besides tears of sweat and occasional blood to complete the metaphor, today had exceptional emotion. There was a bunch of awkwardly situationed couches that stuck knives in our back and clung to the bug-spray on our legs. We faced our last evening of personal testimonies as we partook in the traditional pre- and post-snaps (Legally Blonde reference). Even the unfamiliar characters wanted to join in listening, and talking, as a cricket made a guest appearance. Let's just say we like listening to our own kind better as he was later killed by Chelsea Fitchette's flip flop. Tonight, there was a stage and people presented their hearts and emotions as if on puppet strings. As a group we experienced so much rawness, honesty, and courageous emotion. We struggled with emotions that were so different yet so similar to the ones we experience by day; only this time we break for each other and we expose the poverties we work so hard to hide.

With our nervous couches and salt-drenched face, we heard about the last two journeys and burdens that mark the end of the peer-exploration road. We say a happy and sad goodbye to the dreaded vulnerability and the quivering chins. We know one another and love one another. We're growing in God and ourselves and in our never-ending testimonies. I will simply never forget the moment of 18 snotting girls, with hands intertwined, breathing heavy burdens in a misshapen group hug. I will always remember the relief and hurt and headaches imposed by tears.
I also just can't not love that God unified us the most with people who are furthest from Him. He works in mysterious ways.