I hope this post gives you a little peek into my life as of right now. Currently, I'm on break from the summer camp where I'll be working until July. The campers will show up on Sunday and I can't wait! I've been looking forward to this for the entirety of the spring semester and it's finally HERE. As for the future, I haven't mentioned this yet, but I'll be going abroad in the Fall. To Italy. I know, I'm sure you're thinking "there's no better place to go than Italy!" and I wholeheartedly agree. I am getting so excited, but at the same time, trying so desperately to not wish away what's going on in my life right now. But because I'm going in the fall, I'm having to do a lot of tedious preparations and paperwork during my breaks from camp, which is not the ideal way to spend your 24 hours off. However, God gave me a sweet blessing today. As I've spent a fair amount of my past 2 weeks stressing over getting all of my abroad registration and visa preparation done, I've forgotten what it is that I'm preparing for. Italy. Beautiful, wonderful, dream-filled Italy. Italy is 100% worth every stressful phone call, every frustrating e-mail, every time I find out I have to fill out another form. SO worth it. I was reminded of this beautiful goal today when my sister, who is currently on her way back to the States from studying in Paris for the Spring posted a couple final inspiring thoughts on the blog she's been keeping. And it got me so excited. It's started me thinking of the beauty of Europe, the excitement, and I'm positively giddy right now. I have no doubt that I'll dream of Italy tonight. Additionally, several forms and processes that have been giving me seemingly insurmountable troubles the past couple of weeks finally fell into place today. There were about four things I had to upload to my study abroad account that were highly problematic and blessing upon blessing, I got all four of them uploaded this afternoon. I feel like I conquered Everest.
But to get to the point of setting goals, this has been something God has been teaching me a lot lately. Most recently, today when I recognized the beauty of what all of this work was going towards. In another situation, this past Spring semester, God blessed me with a great great friend. She and I got in this habit for the second half of the semester of setting goals with each other every Sunday at lunch after church. We would set a physical goal, an academic goal, a spiritual goal, and a random goal and the next week we would follow up and see how we did. It amazed me how much growth happened when I had someone who knew what I wanted to get out of my week and would ask me about it. It was incredible. And as for my life right now, I'm setting another goal - scripture memory. I've always known the value of God's word hidden in your heart, but I've never pursued it like I wish I would. At orientation, one of our directors mentioned memorizing the book of Colossians one summer when he worked at camp and I decided I'd like to do the same. After talking with one of my good friends here at camp, we decided that we wanted to try and memorize the book of James together. I am so pumped. Since camp starts on Sunday, so does the verse memorization! I'm hoping by putting that in this post, I'll feel responsible to memorize it and unable to back down from the challenge, a sort of 21st century accountability.
So, here's to remembering what we're working towards.
