I fell in love this week

Please don't hate me for the title of this post. It's not what you think. While I'm using the phrase "I fell in love", I'm not in love in a romantic sense. Read on for more.

(I acknowledge that there's a "cheese" factor to this, but I feel it's important for ME that I write this out...so bear with me)

I just spent the week co-directing Grad Camp, which is a camp for recent high school graduates (ages 17-19). We spent a lot of time discussing transitions and orientation/disorientation/reorientation. I feel like the Grad Camp staff got just as much out of these discussions as the campers. I know I did.

Something I noticed as I was processing through my week on my drive home is that I feel most authentic and genuine when I'm at camp.

Maybe it's something I subconsciously do that causes me to live into camp community differently than I do at home. Maybe it's a calling from God I haven't fully been aware of before now. Maybe it's something else.

What I do know, though, is that every time I have served in a camp role my heart feels so full afterward. This week was no exception.

The difference?

This week I fell in love with myself. 
I also fell deeper in love with God.

I don't want to brush that second statement off, but I really want to focus on the first. In fact, I think the second increases because of the first.

I noticed things about myself this week that I've never noticed before. I lived into the community differently than I have before, and I feel like that allowed me to see myself through a different lens.

Now it's not to say that I didn't love myself before. I did. I feel, though, there's a difference between loving something and being in love with something.

I am excited about what I discovered about myself this week. I want to dig deeper and learn more about myself. I want to practice disciplines I haven't put effort into before. I want to be a healthier me - physically, emotionally, spiritually. I want to love myself well through self care and building strong community around myself. I want to gain habits that push me toward that "self" I found this week, the one I feel hides inside and pokes her head out when I'm serving at camp.

It's not really that I'm a completely different person at camp. My core is the same. I'm still me. I don't think I've felt free to be that "self" outside of the camp setting. It's time I live into that authenticity I found. It's time to love myself and fall more in love with myself.

This is a very different post than I've posted before. It's not a done-deal process. I'm going to keep discovering myself and living into who I feel God has created me to be. Apparently I'm not done listening to him (surprise, surprise) and gaining new insight into God's image within myself.

Thank you, Lord, for a beautiful week in a beautiful location with beautiful people. Thank you for allowing me to see more of the beauty you created within me. Help me not to lose sight of that or to forget what I've learned about myself this week. Keep my eyes and heart fixed on you through the challenges of life.