journeying

How much has changed…

Rebecca — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:51:33 +0000

It’s been so long since I’ve written anything. The last time I wrote I was pretty satisfied with life, I was happy, I was looking forward to my future.

Now, as I read back to what I was saying a few months ago I can’t believe how much has changed. I am still satisfied with life and honestly I’m still looking forward to my future, as for being happy I don’t know where my heart settles there. I am happy, in a way. I feel released from everything that has been so stressful and painful and awful the past few months. But part of me feels empty; like there is something missing and I want to reach out and grab for it but I know that now is not the time. I feel alone…again.

God is doing something great in my life. I believe that he has great plans for me in this next season. I have one semester left of college, I am seriously contemplating one more summer at Firwood (I’ve already checked the website three times for application forms…even though I know it doesn’t come out until January 1), I have dreams to discover.

I really feel like this next little bit of life is going to be full of God teaching me how to dream again. I used to be such a big dreamer. I dreamed of Broadway and record deals and my very own horse, I dreamed of being an author and an actor and an artist, I dreamed of saving the world and travelling and living in Africa or India or somewhere adventurous. My dreams used to be so big. I have dreams now, smaller dreams, the most important dreams. They are the dreams that have been constant since childhood, the ones I know can and will come true. But it’s going to take time, it’s going to take patience, it’s going to take growth. And before those dreams are realized I believe God has something more to fulfill my life with, he has something else to give me hope and happiness and joy and purpose.

I don’t really know why the past six months were necessary, part of me feels cheated because I thought I knew what God had up his sleeves and now my heart is broken and empty, but I know that he will reveal his plan to me in time.

This morning a song came to my mind. It’s a song that means a lot to me. A song I sing every single night of the summer, with a hundred other staff members and hundreds of campers. I was really thinking about the words and what they mean. I know that I need to glorify God though every aspect of my life. I haven’t been doing that lately. That where things fell apart.

But as we are apart, whether it is just for now or the rest of our lives, God has a plan for us and through that my prayer is that we grow, and change, and glorify Him…He is what it is all about.

My friends may you grow in grace,
And in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior
My friends may you grow in grace,
And in the knowledge of Jesus Christ

To God be the Glory
Now and forever
Now and forever, Amen

I pray tonight if we learn from one another,
May we glorify Him,
And if the Lord should bring us back together,
May we be in His arms ’til then

To God be the Glory
Now and forever
Now and forever, Amen

Can’t Focus

Rebecca — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:40:41 +0000

Good Morning,

I woke up at 6:30 this morning so I could shower and do some homework before I work at 9:00. It is is not 8:37 and I have not done any homework.

I can’t seem to focus this week. Ian is going to be here in THREE days and the anticipation is sort of taking up all of my brain capacity. Unfortunately I have two assignments due, Student Council Chapel and work to focus on. I need to clean my room, I need to go see the financial advisor, I need to get books out of the library and start on my philosophy paper, I need to start on a paper for Personality Theories, I need to do so many things but all I can think about is FRIDAY! How do I refocus my brain?

Dear Brain,
Focus on other things.
Love Becca.

Rain

Rebecca — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 07:24:23 +0000

I wrote a really nice and well articulated post about how much I love the sound of rain and how it was comforting to me and I’m enjoying listening to it outside of my window and for some reason it was deleted. Grumble.

When things like this happen I feel like I should just rewrite it all and then I know it will never be as good and I think that maybe those thoughts were just meant for me. So I’m keeping those thoughts…at least those words. Who knows what my next sentence will contain?

I go back to school on Sunday. It’s going to be busy. Classes don’t start until Thursday. However…Monday I will be helping Freshmen move into the dorms, Tuesday-Friday I will be working 9-3. Thursday I will have my only class for this week – Philosophy…yikes! – from 6-9pm. It’s going to be busy.

I don’t know how I will survive this year, I have a lot going on, but I feel like there is nothing I can drop. I’ve opted against voice lessons and probably won’t sing on a worship team. It’s too bad because I really enjoyed voice lessons last semester, I just don’t have the time to do them well.

I’m rambling. It’s late. This is meaningless…I just can’t sleep. So I’m writing. good night

A Pleasant Sunday

Rebecca — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:50:40 +0000

I didn’t do anything productive today. It was blissful.

okay…that’s a lie. I did laundry today. A lot of laundry. But my day was pretty much spent either by the washing machine, changing loads or in my bed or on the couch. It was really splendid.

Unfortunately I woke up at 6:30 this morning to the sound of my alarm clock and found myself wishing I hadn’t found it on Friday. So I got up for a few minutes, grabbed my computer put on a movie and fell back asleep.

How wonderful to have one day to just rest and not do anything. I’m ready to do productive things, and I shall tomorrow. I will hopefully visit with my friend Bethany, do some shopping (which, if not much needed, is much desired), get rid of a TON of clothes (all the ones that sat in my drawer all summer, untouched) and start on my homework.

It’s weird to start thinking about school. This year is going to be new and very different. It will be my first year at Summit without Danielle which is extremely difficult for me to fathom, it will be my last year of college and who knows what follows? I have some ideas but nothing is ever for certain.

Well…I believe I shall end this for the day…no need for public musings. Plus I’m watching Titanic and Jack is talking about “you jump, I jump” and pulling Rose back over the railing. So I should go and enjoy this movie..or maybe just go back to bed. Who knows what my night will hold?

Surprise!

Rebecca — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:13:53 +0000

Have you ever reached a point in your life where you realize nothing is going to turn out how you expected it to? Where you realize that God’s plan is so much better than your plan?

Coming into this summer I had thoughts and dreams about what life after graduation was going to look like. I had lots of “well maybe I’ll do this” thoughts and nothing really concrete, but I was thinking of things that would work…nothing I was super passionate about, just ideas. In some ways I’m back to the drawing board. This summer has been ground breaking. It’s been fabulous, it has been full of discovery and growth and love. I had no idea God could have anything this good planned for me. I’ve always believed that God had good things in store for me…but this? It amazes me to see God’s love so clearly.

God is so good. I’m tired, exhausted really, I can’t actually fathom starting school in just over a week classes and chapels and papers and student council craziness and work and ministry and Summit friends (minus Danielle…booooooo)…it all seems so far away and apart from Firwood. How does this Becca fit in to Summit culture? I guess we’ll see. God has good things planned for me, this year is going to be so different…but it’s just the beginning. Here starts the next chapter of my life.

bring it on.

Firwood in 4

Rebecca — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 04:27:56 +0000

I started packing today. Three more days and I’ll be off to camp. It seems forever since school got out and really strange that if everything had gone as planned I would already be at camp and counselors and CIT’s (counselor – in- training) would have shown up today. I don’t completely understand God’s timing with pushing camp back a week (there weren’t enough campers signed up for the first week of camp so Staff Training is starting a week late) but I suppose I’m glad for the extra week of rest.
To be perfectly honest I have this nagging fear about starting camp. The past couple of summers have been tough on me. They’ve been a reflection of my life during the year although a more intense, in your face version of it. The summers have been lonely for me. More and more I’m wondering if they have really been lonely of it is just my perception of how things have gone. I have friends at camp, people who love me and want what is best for me; I don’t know where this emptiness comes from. I feel it at camp and I feel it at school, I’m pretty sure the answer is that I need to fill that spot with God. I’m not great at having “me and God” time.
When I applied for camp in January I felt like God was speaking the word “healing” over my summer. Again, I don’t know what that means exactly but I’m trying to go into this with an open mind.
I am so excited about my job. It’s strange to think I won’t be welcoming cabins of little girls every week, telling them the cabin rules and assuring them that they can talk to me about anything. I won’t be there to giggle over silly crushes that campers have on counselors, work through the arguments which inevitably come during Cabin Clean Up or tell the girls that they don’t need to bring all of their stuffed animals on the camp out. I won’t have to continually tell the girls that it’s time to go to bed, that they are old enough to walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night by themselves or do bed checks when I can’t figure out why my cabin smells funny. But I also won’t get to explain to girls how much Jesus loves them and died for them and that they are beautiful and strong and can make it through anything with His help. I loved being a counselor.
Back to being excited though! Activity Classes are such a great part of camp. I really do love them. In 2008 I ended up teaching a lot of classes such as Soccer-isbee (Soccer and Frisbee), Kickball and Wiffle Ball with Joe. The bad thing about that situation was that Joe saw how inept I am at anything athletically related, the good thing was in 2009 when he was activities director he assigned me mostly to Sailing and Theatre Sports, the best classes Firwood has to offer.

sail dock at Firwood.

I love Activity Classes because they give you a chance to interact with campers who are not in your cabin, plus when you’re out in the middle of the lake on a sailboat and you start singing they have to listen to you. The campers get to interact with a counselor who is not theirs and see that it’s not only their own counselor who loves them (and loves Jesus) but another 3 or 4 counselors do as well. Also campers are learning skills that hopefully they can use in the real world. How cool for a 4th grader is it to go on vacation with their family and tell their dad they know how to rig a sailboat? Or shoot a bow and arrow? Or drop in on a half-pipe?
I’m also really excited to serve the other staff members. Counselors and CIT’s can get really tired and burnt out. I’m super excited to be there for them as a listening ear or shoulder to cry on.
Reading back on this and knowing I have more to write I’m starting to think I should have just made a list about things I’m excited about rather than going into detail about each thing.
Some of the things I’m excited about are silly things, like getting to be check points during night games and Course to Cove and some of them are meaningful, like seeing kids get to know Jesus and hearing their stories at the end of the week. And seeing my old campers! That’s going to be really fun (if I can remember them, it is NOT fun to have a camper come up to you and say, “remember me?” and you totally don’t).
Good story: Last summer a camper arrived and I went to greet her, she was going to be in my cabin. I recognized her from last summer. This is how the conversation went:
Becca (aka Lygurr): Were you here last summer?
Camper: Yes
Becca: Who’s cabin were you in?
Camper: Yours.

Ouch.
Anyways. I think that my thoughtful side of things is coming to a close. I’m reaching that point where I’m trying to be funny which never turns out well.

Buttercups and Clovers

Rebecca — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 07:23:52 +0000

I decided that today I will tell you what I did today. It was a little mundane I suppose, perhaps you won’t think it interesting, but what I love about life is that no matter what happens in a day there is always a highlight and a lowlight and you will always learn something. They don’t say “you learn something new every day” for nothing! (Something I also believe in is that cliches are cliches for a reason!)

8:45 – Alarm goes off. I’d been awake off and on since 5, I’ve been having all sorts of intense and stressful dreams which makes it difficult to get a restful sleep. Anyways, I got up, made breakfast (a smoothie in my new Magic Bullet – thanks Grandma!) and began to get ready for a photo shoot with Jamie Delaine (http://jamiedelaineblog.com/).

10 – Jess’ friend Tom calls from England. This is a highlight because he is British and thus has an accent. He sounds so proper and wonderful. I wish you could hear me talk because I would imitate him and then you would be able to have some joy by extension. Jamie arrived while Jess was still on the phone. Then we got in Jamie’s car and drove off to a field full of buttercups.

I LOVE Jamie’s photography and have been wishing and hoping that she would take my pictures some day so it was fun to be able to take some shots with my sis (the day before she leaves for Ontario). Jamie is so talented and has such a great heart and really love Jesus which is cool. Plus she loves to run which I really respect. Plus PLUS she reads my blog…do you enjoy your shout out Jamie?

I contemplated climbing a tree today…just to do it…but I didn’t.

So after we took pictures (I decided to stop with the whole time thing…it’s lame) Jess and I went to Wendel’s in Fort Langley and I had a sandwich. They have wheat free spelt bread there. It was good and it didn’t make me sick – always a plus. Then we went to the Watershed and I got some gluten free cookies which were also good and also did not make me sick – another bonus.

5 o’clock rolls around and it’s time to head off to babysit Cooper. I babysat him on Thursday (He was still at daycare when I got there so he didn’t get to say goodbye to his mom/dad and then he freaked out when I had to put him to bed), Friday (I took him to the park and decided to take the dog, bad idea. It is not easy to push a stroller and have to watch out for a tiny puppy on a leash crossing a busy street) and tonight. When I got there at 5 his mom explains to me that last night they went out to a party and Cooper was up until 11:00pm. He slept until noon so he is just napping now. Perfect.

Once Cooper woke up we watched Horton Hears a Who, which we have watched every day that I have taken care of him at least once and one day we watched it twice. Cooper really likes the part where Horton figures that whoever is calling for help from the spec must not be able to hear him so he yells, “Hellllloooooooooo”. When Horton does that Cooper mimics him a bunch of times. Cooper also really liked it tonight when Vlad (not the bunny Vlad, the bad Vlad) attacks Horton and I said “OH NO! WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN?” as if I’d never seen it before and didn’t know that Vlad was ultimately going to drop the clover into a field of clovers. Don’t worry, Horton finds it on the 3 millionth clover. (Sorry if I ruined that for you).

If you know anything about 2 year olds you will know that if they nap late they’re going to be getting to bed late. I put Cooper to bed 2 hours later than usual. For the first hour after that he woke up every 15 minutes screaming. Then every half hour. Really I only went in there 4 or 5 times I think but it’s tiring. The first time I went in I told him to lay down and I rubbed his back for a bit and left. The next time I went in he saw it was me and just lay down. He did that two more times. The last time I went in I got him out of bed and sat in the rocking chair.

I love babies. As I sat there rocking Cooper I thought of what a blessing babies are to me. It was really tiring to have to keep getting up to put him back to sleep but it was also really great to have a cuddle. I had all these thoughts about it while I was rocking him that I planned to share…you know, make this blog a worthwhile read for all of you. But I feel the words depleting in my head. It is now 12:17 AM and I am leaving at 5 AM to take Jess to the airport.

I could just save this and post it later but that would be silly and I would just end up deleting it. So think what you will about my moment with a sleeping child in my arms. Think about all you know about me. You know I’m a mom at heart, and when you call me Mom I secretly (or not so secretly) think it’s a complement. I was saying to someone the other day that my self confidence has been winning out over my self conciousness a lot more lately which I really enjoy. But tonight my tiredness is winning. So, goodnight dear readers…I like you a lot.

Smelly Cat

Rebecca — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:39:00 +0000

Some of you may know the ridiculousness that is my cat. Everyone in my family pretends to hate him but I think they’re just jealous because he likes me the best out of all of them. Seriously, he lets me pick him up and hold him in crazy ways.

Proof.

Some of you may also know of my slight obsession with the show Friends. I love it. Sometimes I quote lines from it as if the characters were real people. For example I’ll say something like, “Once Ross got a spray tan and he counted with “mississippis” and he wasn’t supposed to” or something like that. Then people say “who’s Ross” and usually Danielle will say, “She’s talking about friends”. Man, it’s good to have friends like Danielle around. I don’t know what I’m going to do with out her next year.

Danielle and I at the Grad Banquet

Anyways, how this all fits together. The other night the cat was sleeping on my bed and he came up by my head, which he usually doesn’t do and he lay down and fell asleep. Then he proceeded to begin PASSING GAS right near my face. It was DISGUSTING. Anyways, it just made me think of Pheobe’s song, “Smelly Cat”. If you have never heard Smelly Cat you are missing out and should go check it out on Youtube.

Sigh. However bad the cat smelled I felt as if I could sympathize with Pheobe though. I still love him. Even when he stinks.

I’ve Never…

Rebecca — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:39:33 +0000

I used to be really good at the game “I’ve Never” or “Ten Fingers” or whatever you want to call it. I had really obscure things I’d never done that other people usually have (like climbing a tree…I’ve still never done that one). But this year I did SO MANY things that were on my “I’ve never” list.

I don’t know if I should be upset or excited about this. While it’s really exciting to make people lose that game it’s kind of a shame too because it makes you look like a loser who doesn’t do anything.

In other news - I can’t find my Bible. I think the worst part of it is that I wasn’t looking for it because I just wanted to read it for the goodness of my soul, I needed to read it for a Directed Studies (correspondance) course I’m working on. I don’t like thinking of my B-I-B-L-E as a text book but sometimes that’s what it becomes. That’s just something I’ve been thinking about in the past few hours since I realized I don’t know where it is. And now I’m writing this instead of cleaning my room to find it.

I go to camp in 2 weeks. I still haven’t gone in to apply for my new passport. I hope it will be here in time. If not I can come back and get it, my passport doesn’t expire until July but I don’t really want to come back to Canada once I’m down in Bellingham, it’s such a hassle.

Shout out to Darin who told me I should be arrogant and make people read my blog.

Also, my anonymous commenter told me who he is. I was kind of sad. But now I’m writing for a blog that he and a few other people write for called Stop Six Records..I’m not completely sure how to add links to this but I’m going to try.

So you can find Stop Six Records –> http://stopsixrecords.blogspot.com

have a good night.

Welp…

Rebecca — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:28:04 +0000

Yet again I feel as though I don’t have much to say. Since I got out of school there has been so much going on in my heart and I could put it into words but I feel as though it would be seen as over dramatic, manipulative or too much information and I don’t want to do that. So I’m keeping those feelings in my heart instead of putting them out there for all to see.

Life has been so strange in the past few weeks. I have moments where I can hardly wait the (now) 24 days until camp starts and I count down the days on my calendar and start packing (more in an effort to get my room somewhat clean and organized than anything else). I have other moments where I feel like calling camp up and saying “I’m scared, I’m not coming” – in other words running away. I am super stoked about my job side of things. I really believe in what I’m going to be doing this summer and hope that my excitement will translate to the counselors and CIT’s who will be teaching classes. I am terrified about friendships. The past two summers have been difficult for me and I had actually decided never to go back when I felt God urging me to be there. I had felt at peace about it all until recently those fears came back. I don’t know what to expect and honestly don’t want to have any expectations at all but I have learned a lot about myself this year and something I have learned is my ridiculous desire to run away from conflict and confrontation. So here I am, looking ahead to a summer that I’m sure will be filled with ups and downs. Please pray for me as I begin this adventure.

I saw a few youth from church at Historymaker this weekend. Sam and Amber are junior leaders for the junior highs that I worked with this summer and Katie is one of the girls from my small group. It made me miss them even more than I had been before. I’m trying not to make any decisions about going back until the end of the summer but it is so difficult not to talk about it as a definite thing. I found myself thinking about small group lesson plans and looking into bible studies for girls this weekend. I found myself trying to figure out a way to go visit before I leave for camp. I found myself wondering if it would really be okay for me to go back. It hurts my heart to think about going to a different church, to different students. I don’t know how I fell so in love with this group of kids, all I know is that I did and I do love them with all my heart. It kills me to think of them week after week growing up more and more without me getting to be a part of it. How selfish is that?

I need to pray for my heart. It’s been hurting a lot lately. I don’t think people quite understand where my heart is at and it frustrates me when they give me advice without knowing all that is going on in my heart. But then again, I don’t even fully know.

So there you go. My ramblings for the time being. It doesn’t exactly flow, it’s not really all that eloquent but it’s there. Enjoy.