Summer and Everything After.

On Monday night, I will begin working as a counselor at a camp in southern Missouri. That means that I'm currently in the midst of my last "Summer" weekend. I return to school four days after I get back from camp. So if you think about it, this is my last summer break (making this my last summer weekend). After next summer, I will most likely not return for classes in the fall (thus nullifying it as an official summer). I have very little knowledge of what life will look like at that time. But I digress.

Tonight it's time to reminisce. I've had a streak of about 17 fun-filled summer breaks--not bad, if you ask me. I started school at my church's Academy. I spent my elementary school in classes never bigger than 20. One year, we had 6. My life was good then. Not that it's not now, it was just really good then. I had a problem every once in a long while, but they were normally overshadowed by recess. I started my love/hate relationship with Christian culture there. I also began to undertake the thing called faith there. My summers consisted of neighborhood games, neighbors, and the occasional sporting event.

Junior High took me from the protected gulf of Traders Point Christian Academy to the lion's den--Brownsburg Junior High. A very different education awaited me there. I learned that people weren't all Christians. I learned lots of things, socially and otherwise. I found that most people hated Junior High. I loved it--decent grades for minimal effort and girls. Neighborhood night games (oh, how I love capture the flag) were the mainstay of my summer nights.

High school was pretty much the same as Junior High, but harder work (harder, not hard) and more sports. My life through high school was very enjoyable. I loved hanging out with people, liked flirting with girls, and liked playing sports, probably in that order. Driving opened up choices--choices that (luckily) I was sufficiently insecure/goody-goody to screw up too badly. Summers took on a different air when I got keys. My first car was a Jeep; may she rest in peace. My love for Indiana was forged on summer nights with windows down and stars illuminating thousands of acres of corn. Each summer was different and wonderful. The summer after senior year brought a budding faith and a waning first love (strangely intertwined, I suppose).

I should also mention the blessing of other friends--I could not have asked for better people to know and love. In both high school and college, they've made life wonderful.

Ahh, college--new friends, harder school, and actually realizing my potential in sports. School became a passion instead of an obligation. Adulthood seemed imminent when I college began, but I've since learned that its a facade anyway. Still, adult life has slowly enveloped me in it's methodical droning. My friends--high school and college alike-- have begun to spread out and embark on life as grown-ups.

So here I sit, looking back on a great run of summer breaks, hesitant to move forward into my own "real" life. Thus far, life has been good. The past few years I've tasted the joys and pains of becoming my own man. I can't say that I'm fearless. Actually, I'm quite fearful.

This would be a good time to believe the words of a Jewish carpenter who had something to say to the world.

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? "

If worrying added hours, I'd live forever.