Reflection: Guatemala and Graduation

I’m back! From my mission trip to Guatemala, studying, fighting Senioritis, and now preparing for my graduation at the end of the week, it’s been a crazy past few months. But they have been some of the best months of my life, I think. Lots of laughter, lots of tears, and overall just a lot of awesome memories. I’m overwhelmed with gratitude with what God has been doing in my life, using people I love from church and school to have one last impact on me before I head off to college. This post is to do some reflecting over two big events – Guatemala, which has already happened; and Graduation, which is yet to come.

Yesterday morning in church, we sang “Beautiful Things” by Grungor, and God used the song to really touch my heart. Not only is it a perfect connection for the experiences I had and the people I met in Guatemala, but also is a connection for what God has done with me and the Class of 2013. Here are the lyrics:

All this pain
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way
I wonder if my life could really change at all
All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found
Could a garden come up from this ground at all

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

All around
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

You make me new, You are making me new
You make me new, You are making me new
You are making me new

The first and second verses are perfect application for Guatemala. Our job in going down there was to help with an organization that gives hope to the children of Guatemala. Gangs are everywhere, and this organization gives the kids a different option rather than being forced into that lifestyle. The organization gives them two meals a day - which the kids may not get otherwise - and teaches them all about the Gospel and the Word of God. My team and I got to spend a week with these amazing, hilarious, sweet, smelly, enthusiastic, grateful, wonderful children. We had heard from previous teams who went to Guatemala that the children would have an impact on your heart that was unexplainable. They were right.

As we walked through the dirt streets of Guatemala, seeing the children’s faces, we knew there was hope. We saw it in their eyes. We saw it in their smiles. Kids that were caught up in the gang-lifestyle probably thought something to the Grungor lyrics, “I wonder if my life could really change at all…could all that is lost ever be found.” These kids once were lost, hopeless. Until Jesus found them. Until Jesus brought them out of the dark alley ways of Guatemala and brought them into the light where they would find peace and security again. That’s what my team and I witnessed. We watched “hope springing up from this old ground”, and we saw God do a work in that city unlike we had seen anywhere else. The trip was indescribable, and everyone on my team could probably agree with me. No matter how hard we try, we can never explain to others what God did in our hearts that week. He scarred us in Zone 18 – the place said to have no hope in Guatemala. The place where gangs run rampant, children go hungry, and where lives are destroyed. But we dwelled among those people – the outcast and the hurting. We saw that God was doing a work there beyond all human understanding. "Out of chaos, life was being found in You."  He was making all things new.

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

But Guatemala wasn’t the only place where I was seeing amazing things happen. God was working within the very hearts of my classmates, and it was incredible. Watching my senior class grow over these past eighteen years has been such a rewarding experience. It’s been awesome watching their perspectives change as the years go by – as the selfish become selfless, the proud become humble, and the served become servants. I’m grateful for a God who doesn’t leave us as the elementary whiners or the middle school gossipers. He takes us beyond. Even just these past four years of high school, God has done magnificent things in our hearts. He gave us a passion for His Word and a yearning to serve those around us so that we might be role models for the next generations.

Week by week, another “last” comes along. The last song from senior singers. The last homerun from the senior baseball players. The last bow from the senior actors (me being one of them). The last goal from the senior soccer girls. The last AP Lit class where our teacher predicted what each of us is going to do in life. The last yearbook signing. While each “last” comes and goes, I am reminded how blessed I am. How blessed I have been to have teachers who genuinely yearn for our success, love us, and pray for us. How blessed I have been to grow up with a class full of all kinds of people – athletes, braniacs, artists, future engineers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, presidents, pharmacists, writers, missionaries, counselors, and teachers. There are endless possibilities and opportunities that await my 76 loves, and I can’t wait to see how God uses them in the future.

I think the hardest part about graduation for me is leaving the teachers. The kids…I’ll see who I want to see. My family…they’re not too far away, and I can always give them a call when I’m homesick (which I’m sure will be more often than I think). But the teachers…ah man. They have seen our best and worst moments, and yet, they still root for us. They yell our names at football games. They give us hugs after musicals. They fellowship with us, play monopoly with us, watch movies with us. They go beyond the boundaries of textbooks and help us live and experience the subject. They could choose to just sit at their desk and look upon us as nothing more than their hour-and-a-half students and when the bell rings the relationship ends. But they don’t. The teachers seek fellowship with us beyond the walls of their classroom. They seek a relationship with us just as the Lord does. They have been proof of His mercy time and time again.

They give us pats on the back when we do something right and discipline us when we do something wrong. We have “therapy” sessions several times throughout the year in French, where our teacher lends us her shoulder to cry on when we’re having a rough day. My Economics teacher weeps with us when we have suffered a loss, and laughs with us when we have a funny story to tell. My Lit teacher incorporates the Gospel into any story, even one as obscure and random as The Awakening, just because her heart is so knitted to His. My freshmen/sophomore year Bible teacher prays with us when we need guidance, but also plays ultimate frisbee with us after school. My teachers are a hodge-podge of creative geniuses, and each one is unique in their own way. God has used them in radical ways, ways that none of us could even attempt to understand.

At this point I’m just babbling, but it’s been good babbling. When I walk across that stage this weekend, take the diploma , shake my headmaster’s hand, and move my tassel to left, I’m sure that all these memories will flash before my eyes in a quick whirlwind….or I’ll just be too freakin’ excited to even be able to think coherently. All that to say, the past thirteen years with my school have been magical, whether it was spent exploring the history of D.C. in eighth grade, playing tag with the children in Guatemala senior year, or just in the traditional classroom setting. Hearts have been scarred, talents have come to fruition, perspectives have been shifted, lives have been changed, and God has decided to make “beautiful things out of us”. Thank you, Class of 2013, for everything.