New Thing?

Yeah, so one of my good ol’ friends, Klassickayla is doing this “Do a new thing every day” thing. So it’s pretty cool she does cool stuff like eat wasabi peas and fly kites and watch awesome movies with yours truly…. well. Here’s how the story goes. (click on her name to get her side of the story!) We were sitting in Mcdonalds after Youth Group like we always do, and she’s like “Hey Grace, I need something new to do today.” So we’re all like “You should dance in the middle of Mcdonalds!”

Well, she didn’t go for that, but she did go for riding cargo in my Dad’s Suburban. So we were sitting back there where there’s a shovel and a blanket and some old pieces of wood from making campfires and we see this absolutely amazing car. It’s a station wagon! Woot! Anyways we had fun oogling it, but it was really slow, so we passed it right away(this story is starting to sound like my emo kid story, so I’m going to spice it up) Then we started talking about relationships.

I can honestly say I’ve never had an intense conversation with someone while huddled up in the back of my dad’s monster suburban. Expecially not one that is so important for teenagers, girls especially, to talk about.

Basically we talked about having friends who can look past themselves and be genuine and care about each other. I am humbled by the fact that someone from the outside coming in thinks that my youth group has those kind of people. I remember when I was just coming into youth group and was thrust into this incredibly clicky system where everyone was a certain way and if you weren’t a certain way then they wouldn’t be bff with you. You kind of had to have an outgoing personality to be even noticed. Me being a shy 6th grader at the time, I was not outgoing by any means. So I got pushed to the side to watch. Thinking about how far we’ve come since then just humbles me. I don’t even know how it happened that I turned into the one that decides how newcomers are treated. When did I become the one that either makes or breaks someone’s Youth Group experience? I don’t remember when I became so…. influential? When I became the big kid in the “In” group.

This leads to another topic that was discussed in the back of the truck. When did I grow up? When did I realize that I’m not the little girl that aimlessly walks down the middle of the street, unaware that a car could come careening around the corner and hit me? When did I realize that I’d grown up? How did it happen, and how can I undo it? The scary part is, I can’t undo the fact that I’m 16 years old and have nothing substantial to say about my life. I think that in the past year I’ve made more of myself then I’ve made in all the 15 years before that. and even still, when it all adds up, I’m just a bit of sand on a beach. How does this happen? How does one lose so much of their childhood? when does one wake up from a blissful dream and realize they’ve wasted half their life dreaming about the astro-turf on the other side?

In case you haven’t noticed yet, I’m utterly befuddled by this.

Thoughts, comments, concerns, critisism? I’m open to comments(Comments, not spam.) so have at it, I’ll try to respond as soon as I can.

btw! Check out Kayla’s blog at KlassicKayla.wordpress.com ***thumbs up***