I wish I'd had a blog when...

Yesterday in class I had my students each share their three dream jobs. I want them to know that when they grow up they don't have to choose just one thing, but their lives can be about so many things they're passionate about. I'm so glad that Sarah Briggs convinced me to start Overlap so that I could be a writer and a photographer and a storyteller. Coming up with what I'm going to post makes me think and process what's going on in my life, it forces me to look for opportunities to live life to the full, it's taught me to notice more things about the world around me and the people in my life.

If only I had started the blog a bit earlier because there are so many other great stories, and so many people, that I would have loved to write about.

I wish I'd had a blog when Dom, Taylor and I road-tripped back from a ski weekend at Timber Wolf together. We had the best heart to heart for the first hour and then had the most spontaneous adventures that had us pulling off at nearly every other exit. We found Phineas, a small ceramic worm outside a closed antique store, went to Ashely the smiling city, had a dance party on a bulldozer, found duh house and...

had the most terrifying experience of my life getting chased by a pit bull. While it was unfortunate that this vicious dog was unleashed to kill us, it was lucky that the self-timer captured our terrified sprint away from this beast. I'm still not sure how we managed to escape.

I wish I'd had a blog when I was on Day Camp staff. That first summer as the Explorer coord were some of my favorite weeks ever. Everything was new and exciting and fun and it felt like everyone on staff really was best friends. I learned so much about being a counselor during those summers and fell in love with camp even more than when I had been a camper.

Other Day Camp counselors like Schroeder, Kelsey, Sarah Scott, Katie Quille, Alyssa, Aaron Mitchell-Dick, Pula, Krafty, Fitzie, Meg, Carrie Smith and Meg Wright become some of my very best friends and the people that I would spend the rest of the year visiting and talking to on AIM.

I lived with Weeds and Sarah in Wyandot my first summer and then with Scales, Colleen Drasga and Sarah Scott in Teton. Those summers have some of the best stories-- devotions on a roof and the blob, the PP ceremony and Sir Cletus Jim Smock, the Easter bead devotion and the one on the Lookout when we woke up the girls early Saturday morning.

I wish I'd had a blog when we started the mentor girls in youth group my Senior year of High School. The girls in our HS small group were all paired up with middle school girls that came to our church. I hung out with Jordan and Morgan, my two girls, that year and helped organize sleepovers and movie nights and progressive dinners for all of us. It was because I loved the mentor girls so much that I decided to get involved in Young Life in college.

I wish I'd had a blog my summers as a Pathfinder counselor. I loved finally getting to be a resident counselor and really getting to know the girls in my cabin. I won the lottery and got such rock star campers and ended up moving up with them for three years of camp.

I would have told stories of Gerard and my assistant lifeguard, Women's Journey nights and devotions in Teton, hip-hop clinic and jumping rope before lunch, the Roger Murphy swim and float trips with Arapaho, serenades and girls crying long before the Torchbearer part of campfire began.

I wish I'd had a blog to write about weekends at Casey Dawson's lake house. She was one of my very best friends at Hope and I loved when we would just get into one of our CR-Vs and drive up 31 to her cottage. We'd watch movies rented from Blockbuster and eat good food and write Top 10 lists on the porch and sleep in the window room at night with the lighthouse in the distance.

I wish I'd had a blog when I got to be a counselor with so many of my best friends. I get to blog about recent years of counselors but I have so many more memories with Rachie, Molly, Lilly, Emily, McSoley, Kathleen, Meg, Casey, Delong, Fitzie and Paige. Those girls made me laugh and made me love River Village in the days when I first switched over. Together we came up with everything that fits in the "creative counseling" category and loved our kids well.

I wish I'd had a blog when I went on a mission trip to the Young Life camp Pico Escondido in the Dominican Republic my Sophomore year. That experience was easily one of the best weeks of my entire life. I would write about playing Catch Phrase, life stories, building the grill and wheel-barrowing rocks up a mountain, quiet time on the side of the hill with hot chocolate every day, dancing in the rain, dinner at Chicken Man, jumping off of waterfalls, Jackie and Leigh, singing songs in Spanish, walking to the store to get pop and hot dog cheetos, eating rice and beans for every meal and being part of the most authentic community I'd ever seen.

I wish I'd had a blog when I went through Rush and got my bid to be a SIB. I still remember sitting in my room in Dykstra, waiting for a knock on the door that would bring in my sister and the other Panhel girls with my bid. I raced through the building to find the other girls that would be in my pledge class and then screamed and squealed together because we were so excited to be in it together. Although I would have also loved to blog during pledge I wouldn't have been able to because everything is a secret.

I would have written about being at Hope with Katie for one year and my weekly, or more often daily, trips to her house. I would write about getting to be a SIB with her and being real life friends.

I wish I'd had a blog when I was a CILT counselor for the first time. The first session was crazy because I felt so incredibly lost in this program but I was surrounded by the group of girls that I knew better than anyone else. I would have written about working with Glanders and Fitzie and how much I loved the kids in all three of the sessions that summer. We figured things out as went and we did some of our best work that year.

I wish I'd had a blog when I went with Allison, Dom, Taylor and other Carmel kids on a work crew training weekend in KY. We went to the land of yonder and turned into Fred, Crimson Foot, Dancing Tulip and Brown Bear before we had a battle with Drat- Face. We grew so much in faith and in our friendships in just a couple of days.

I wish I'd had a blog when I was a Freshmen at Hope. I love Hope College but my beginning there was not easy. Those first few months I made it through with friends like Tracy, Lani, Emily and Keri that were some of the most fun, creative, loving and faithful people I'd ever known.

I wish I'd had a blog when I was in SIB Nation.

Being a SIB was such a defining part of my time at Hope. We lived together, spent so many Sunday nights in the basement of the cottage, went on retreats, ate meals together at the SIB and Emmy table in Phelps, sat in the hallways of our dorms and cottages just talking, got donuts at midnight and sat together in the old wooden pews of Dimnent Chapel. I wish that I had a better record of my four years with these friends.

I don't stay in touch with these friends as much as I wish I did. Koffie, Kimmy, Marissa, Gretchen, Sara Neilsen, Ruthie, Wade, Fezzey, Jamie, Jenna, Ali Roth, Casey, Krissy and so many other girls were my family, community and support at Hope. It was so hard to leave them when I graduated and I still love going back to visit.

I wish I'd had a blog when I first started Young Life in Carmel. I thought I was done with YL when I left Holland but God had other plans for me and before I knew it I was going to YL stuff multiple times a week. I was connected with a group of Senior girls right away and was so blessed by my relationships with them that year. We spent so many Monday nights sitting in a circle in this basement room or in Narnia upstairs. We talked about things that really mattered and these girls lived life to the full. I'm so thankful I'm still close with some of them three years later.