Guest Post: Restored

This post comes to you from YouthWorks Alumni Staff, Mary Dunne. She is an alumni staff that has been hired to join us again in a few months. Here she reflects here on her journey through last summer as she thinks through the upcoming one. To read more about her journeys visit her blog, “What Happy Looks Like” . This post is an excerpt from her blog. 

 

8 weeks from now, I will be either in Birmingham, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, or Denver.Wow. I will be sitting in a circle with three eager and amazing and nervous strangers, knowing they will soon be my family. I will be sneaking into a dark room, tripping over two dozen air mattresses, trying to get to my own. I will be texting my mom and telling her I miss her already, and that I’m safe. I will be hugging old friends and new friends. I will be scared, excited, joyful, nostalgic, and filled with wonder.

 

8 weeks from now, my heart will be set on fire again. I will fall in love again. With the people, the places, and the stories that I’ll hear. I’ll feel whole in a way that I haven’t in almost a year. I’ll know that I’m where I am where I belong. 8 weeks from now, I will fall in love with Jesus all over again. It will happen when I hear that first Hillsong track on the plane and it will happen when I hear Him speak through my SD, my AD, and my RD. It might even happen when I get that first cup of YouthWorks coffee on Tuesday morning. But I know that it will happen.

 

And so will go the next three months. Day after day, my love for life will be ignited by love through the love of God. I will rediscover how to let go and cast my cares on God. Last summer, I learned so fully that the unexpected moments in life are not unplanned, nor are they to be complained about; they’re to be rejoiced over.

 

 

 

Restored. Every Wednesday, we focused on how God was restoring everything around us. The community, the people we met, and even our own hearts. At the very end of Club, we brought up a wooden palette that had the words “How is God restoring this community?”written on it. Every week, the youth and adult leaders that came would write how they saw God working in Mingo County, and every week their words brought me to my knees. Our God is so great. We would play Beautiful Things by Gungor(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR7VOKQ0xJY) and be restored with God’s love. On this night, somewhere in a misty cloud on top of a mountain in the middle of West Virginia, with 50 youth, adult leaders, and staff who were giving their hearts in worship, God wrecked me.

 

See, there had been one particular youth that week who really got our team’s attention. We’ll call him Joe. Joe was openly struggling with his faith and was questioning why he came on the trip at all. Luke sat with him as he asked difficult questions and we prayed for him to know Jesus that week. During free time, Joe would sit alone with his headphones in—I could see that his heart was not present. This Wednesday night, on that mountain, he came to know Jesus.

 

As we sang Beautiful Things, our youth came up and, in the light of the headlights, wrote their experiences on the palette. Joe came up and I saw tears rushing down his face, and he then returned to his seat with the others. When the song was finished and everyone had had their chance to write how they saw God moving in their lives that week, we were packing up when Joe came up to us, crying even harder than before.

 

“I just want to thank you…for giving me my faith back tonight.”

 

Those words—that raw moment of utter vulnerability and dependence on God—will be with me forever. My team put our arms around Joe and prayed with him before the 45 minute car ride, which we spent listening to worship music and silently praying about what we’d just witnessed.

 

My God is larger than life. He is transformative and intentional and He can move mountains. He built them, after all.

 

It’s funny, you know? We panic and we stress because things go wrong. People make mistakes, we know this. Plans get ruined. We are imperfect. But our God is perfect. He makes no mistake; He laughs at our plans. My first summer with YouthWorks has taught me countless truths. But above all else, it’s taught me to trust in God. The night I panicked because my plans had been “ruined” ended up being the best night of my life. I got to experience something raw and beautiful. I got to be an instrument of God.

 

8 weeks from now, I’ll lift my heart to Heaven and beg God to reveal Himself to me in the way that can only be experienced during a summer with YouthWorks. I’ll begin experiencing these incredible, breathtaking God moments again, and I will be fully dependent on my God to give me energy and life and hope and patience and love for everyone I meet.

 

It’s not that I don’t experience God in my everyday life outside of YouthWorks; of course I do. I see Him in the opportunities He presents me with, the phone-calls from my Grandma, the words of my mother. I see him in the Greek community uniting to overcome tragedy. I see God when I pick up my guitar and learn a new chord and when my cat wraps her paws around my arm. God is in the books I read, the sunshine that lights my pages, and the pictures my mom’s daycare kids draw for me (“Marey.”) He is everywhere. He doesn’t leave me when I come back home, just like He doesn’t leave the communities when we do. But there is something entirely unique and dense about God’s presence on a YouthWorks summer. It’s indescribable, undefinable, and unmatchable. But it is real.

 

8 weeks from now, I will continue my journey to know my Creator and further His kingdom.

 

And I can’t freakin’ wait.