The Summer of In-Between

There is something slightly magical about summer...summer romances, summer adventures--it seems as if you can take a temporary break from your life during these three months, do things not normally in your character or even things you'd like to admit to, and simply dismiss it all due to the heat, the night, or even the bugs. There is the famous "Summer of Love" in 1969 and the self-proclaimed "Summer of George" from Seinfeld, but it seems like my summer thus far has yet to live up to its potential. Don't get me wrong... I was able to take an amazing trip to Ireland, (which you can view pictures from my trip on the link) and I lived it up over there! I will never forget the cliffs, the sheep, the pubs, or the people; but I think returning home from such an amazing trip to face three months of working a summer retail job is starting to set in for me.
I feel so ready, yet slightly terrified, to start the task that lies before me: moving to a third-world country to be one in a city of 3 million people where I will be responsible for teaching 25 kindergarteners all that they will need to know to enter into 1st grade. While I used to see the "Everything I Needed to Know in Life I Learned in Kindergarten" posters as inspiring, I now see them as something to make me feel inadequate and terrified. I mean, I must truly be crazy to take on such an endeavor, but perhaps it is more terrifying to think of living out my 20's by just living from paycheck to paycheck in a rental house in yuppie-ville u.s.a. Maybe I'm crazy, but maybe---just maybe---I may be brilliant in blowing these years of my life, which are prime for saving and building a financial foundation for both a future home and family, and tossing them to the wind with reckless abandon as I sell my things and board a plane with a backpack, a one-way ticket, and big dreams to change the world.
While it is just barely into June, I know that I am here for a reason. God is definitely prepping me...I am finally able to catch up on my "Divine Deficit" i.e. "churchy life" from college. God moved in awesome and miraculous ways in my life during college, most of which got me to the point where I am at today, but I missed out on some of the basics, like actually going to church during my 4 years there. So not everything about this summer so far is really as bad as I may have led you to believe a couple of paragraphs ago...I'm just ready to go. It would be like hearing from a psychic that the man of your dreams will be everything that you're looking for and so much more, but it will be 10 more years until you meet him--hard to enjoy and fully live life up until that point. But these are the times to savor, and like sand in the hourglass, so are the days of our lives. (Did I mention I've been subjecting myself to soap operas for the past few weeks??)