Mama

What is it with girls and wanting to reject what's naturally in them? I'm talking about femininity. A couple posts ago I wrote about how I'm a romantic and I can't really help it. Today I'm going to talk about how I'm motherly and I can't really help that either.
I'm staffing a DTS right now, which means I'm walking alongside other adolescents, most of them younger than me, who feel they have a call to missions, want to grow more and be discipled in the truths of Christ so they can be more equipped take the Good News to the world. I wanted to staff a DTS because I know that I love seeing transformation. It's one of my favorite things. Watching something or someone go from old to new, dead to alive is fascinating to me and moreso, I love being a part of the process. So walking into this, I knew I would see lots of transformation and it would be great. But I've been surprised lately at how great it's actually been. Like, how much I genuinely love and care about these students. I was expecting to love and care about them obviously, but not this much. I'm noticing silly things like, if I'm walking around on campus and I see one of them waving to me from a distance, my heart leaps a little bit and I get an overwhelming sense of pride for who they are. Or I'll be in class and hear one of them ask our speaker a brilliant question and get teary eyed from how far they've come since day one. Or I'll watch one of them start falling in love with another person and my mother hen feathers will rustle up and I'll just want to protect them from the inevitable hurt and risk that comes with loving someone else.
It's weird.
Another example, the other day we did the ropes course. The ropes course is all about team building and unity. It's all what you make it. If you want to be lousy and reject teamwork, it will be a hard day for you on ropes. But if you hold others above yourself and decide to devote yourself to being a team, the day is everything it possibly could be. And that day, my team.... was SO great. Selfless, sacrificial and serving. Each challenge we went through, I noticed each one of them moving form the mindset of 'individual' to a mindset of 'team', which, if you've experienced the shift of that mindset, is a very powerful thing. The whole time I was just observing them, and my heart was bursting with pride and love for how great they were doing. I didn't care that my feet were throbbing or that my harness was giving me bruises under my butt. I was just silently praising God in my heart that his Holy Spirit has been transforming the hearts of these people, these people that I love dearly, these people that make me so proud.

So, GREAT, now I'm not only a romantic, I'm also a freaking mom.
There goes all my plans for being an independent hard-ass.

Here's some pictures of people in this DTS. Try not to tear up.