It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood….

Yesterday we had temps In the upper 60’s with sunshine and a light breeze off the water. It was gorgeous and I spent the afternoon outside painting siding panels and enjoying the glimpse into spring. It’s coming! Sunday on the way home from church I saw faint red mist of tree buds scattered in the woods. We’re on the way for sure from here on out.

In the spring theme of hope and joy and with the inspiration of a good friend, I sat down a thought through what I’ve learned/ how I’ve grown in the past year and a half since college. Here’s what I came up with:

I’ve learned a lot about my own ability to lead.

Working as a crew chief at Springhill (summer ‘09) taught me a lot about managing and the balance between doing and supervising. I learned how to delegate jobs to the people in my crew and drift back and forth checking on them and helping where needed without overpowering them or sitting around watching while they did everything. After coming out of high school and college where everything was catered to me, I was suddenly treated as an adult and learned to push my needs aside and take care of other people. I saw how much more I was capable of even when I thought I had no more to give or couldn’t run on the amount of sleep I was getting. I also learned to drive a tractor (one of my favorite new skills) and use power tools like leaf blowers and string trimmers.

Since I’ve been at Barrier Island I’ve grown a lot in communication and time management. The first year I learned a ton of barrier island and marine biology/ecology, which taught me how much I could still learn outside of college. I remember in training when we were taken out to beach comb and taught about all the washed up things on shore thinking that I would never be able to remember all those things and only a few months later I was leading groups down the beach and easily teaching them about whatever they could find. I’ve gained patience by leading team building activities and seeing kids succeed at things they thought were impossible. I’ve gotten a lot better at teaching by asking leading questions to help people figure something out instead of just spitting out facts. I’ve learned the importance of discipline and that it can be done without being overly harsh.

Getting ready to leave college I thought I would never see any of those people again and I wondered if there was any point to making friendships in temporary places like that if they aren’t going to last. I learned that not all relationships are based on being in the same place and solid friendships can last even when you aren’t right down the hall from each other anymore. I’ve also learned that even if a relationship doesn’t last forever it doesn’t mean that it was meaningless and it doesn’t make it any less real. Coming to South Carolina drove a lot of that stuff deeper. I was really scared coming to a new place away from everything I knew into a job I knew was temporary. I was afraid to become friends with anybody because I felt like we would just all leave at the end of the year, never see each other again and it would all be pointless. But I learned that wasn’t true. We aren’t destined to lose touch forever with people we care about. There are ways to stay in touch. And even if you never see each other again it still matters and it’s worth making relationships with people.

I’ve also learned a lot about God’s love. A good friend pointed out that even our seemingly stupid and unreasonable caring for people with flaws who may come and go and not always return our love is a beautiful fraction of a picture of how God loves us. Instead of looking at that kind of thing as stupid and a reason to be angry at ourselves we can see it as an illustration of God and it can make us love him more instead of hating ourselves. I also finally started to grasp grace and understand how God doesn’t measure me against standards of accomplishments but looks at who I am. He doesn’t get mad when I’m having trouble trusting him and struggling with learning and growing, he sees the desire to grow and what I will become as if it already were.

It’s been a good season. It’s always encouraging to look back and see progress. We’re always growing!

"Well, I'm on my way, but I don't know where I'm going"- Paul Simon

Looking ahead at the end of this job, housing, etc. in May and seeing options for the future but nothing set yet

The future is looking hopeful...met my first viable housing option today! And two job possibilities in the wings...now just the waiting time till I can make action on those fronts.

What I'm learning right now...patience, patience, patience, peace, trust, patience, patience, patience, patience :)

Recent craft/art discovery: homemade envelopes. They're so easy and so much fun to make!

And next....a photo tour of the beach walk from Saturday morning

A Sweet moth we saw right away. I've never seen anything like it. I think it looks like a stained glass window.

A blue crab creeping along the shore looking for his breakfast

Looking out on the salt marsh. It's really starting to fade to it's winter gold quickly now.