Rock The Boat.

Picture this; you are sitting in a nice little rowboat. You feel safe as the waves rock you gently back and forth the sun is bathing your skin in warmth and all seems calm and peaceful. You inhale deeply appreciating the warm salty scent of the sea air. You are happy and undisturbed that is until you realize you are laying on the ore, it is uncomfortable but you are fine with it, you think you can ignore it because you are just to comfortable to actually move it even though moving it will move you into the position of greater comfort. So as you sit in the boat relaxing in the sun the ore in you side gets more and more uncomfortable, it starts to irritate you to the point where you can no longer ignore it. It ruins your pleasant time where all seems right, it all fits and is comfortable. That ore is the thing that causes you to look into why maybe you are not as comfortable as you think and you decide to move it. But once you move it you find that the bailing bucket is now a source of discomfort, along with the other ore, in fact the more you move things and try to make them fit in places where you will once again have the blissful feeling of comfort and peace and security the more you come to be angry with the boat for being so small and constricting, the more you do not understand the design of your oh so loved little boat, and the more you try to figure the puzzle out the more the boat becomes cramped and confusing. Soon this little sanctuary becomes a place of anxiety and fear and anger, it has been ruined. As you try to look for the comfort you once had the further it seems to get. In your frustration you panic the boat starts to rock more and more violently on the waves that were so gentle they almost put you to sleep, in the end you end up falling in and you don’t know how deep it is…

So, this week was long week. Thirty-five hours of class, with Wes Olmstead. It was good but it was long. Gospels was really interesting, it got me thinking a little deeper on some things and it got me asking some other questions I think I was avoiding for a while. But here I stand face to face with all the things I wondered and now I am on a journey on figuring it out, heres hoping that it turns out and I come out stronger from wrestling with these thoughts and questions.

I did not go to youth this week because I was working in the kitchen so I have nothing to tell you there.

After church on Sunday Pastor Rob invited us to his house for lunch to tell them about the things we did at the Olympics. I was actually dreading as I wanted to do homework and study for the Gospels exam, but I actually had such a good time. I met the new Youth Pastor his names is Phil Hazzard. He seems pretty cool to me, I’m sure he will be a good fit for the youth.

As I sit here writing this I dawns on me how time is slipping by so quickly, and how I am not sure if I am ready to leave here. I am scared to go back out into the world, and I honestly am not sure if I will be able to stand up on my own, as I explore these new feelings and questions that have arisen over the past few weeks and months I hope that I will able to be rooted in something stronger then what I am now. It is scary exploring things when you think you are in a nice little safe nest with everything figured out.

…You fall into the water and it can be one of two things, deep or shallow. Say you were to fall in and it is deep. You tread water for a little while trying to keep your head a float as you watch your little boat get carried away by the currents and then growing to tired to hold your head up you drown. Or as soon as you fall in you start treading water for fear of drowning but after some time you realize that the water is in fact not that deep, and you stand up and are completely safe but you look and see you’re boat was carried away by the current. But I guess I lied, there is another option that could happen as soon as you fall into the water you realize that the water is not deep and you promptly stand up realizing you are safe and climb back into your little boat appreciating it for it coziness that you once thought was constricting because you now see that that was the thing that was keeping you safe all along. Upon climbing in you realize that there is a little compartment for the ore and buckets, it would seem the little boat is bigger then you thought, with much more places explore.

Sometimes rocking the boat is not the greatest idea because you could drown but then again you could find that the water is only waist deep and will be able to get back in to the boat that you once loved so much.

Thanks for reading.

Abby