Can you believe this past weekend was the last Navs conference I will ever attend as a student? Me either. This makes conference #8, as I have been blessed to attend each fall and winter conference since I was a baby freshman here at USM. Now, I’ve arrived to some of them half dead and barely a person, but got there none the less. I don’t really have much to report on about this one, but felt obligated to make a post anyway ’cause its kinda tradition at this point.

After having a lovely breakfast of cinnamon rolls with Emma on Friday morning, it was time to get locked and loaded and head down to Southbridge, MA. I did get to fulfill a dream of mine since freshman year, and that was being the student MC for the conference. All it took were 2 quick emails, and I was booked along with Misa from NYU. I arrived to the pre-session meeting on Friday night very intimidated to be standing with all the Northeast staff, including powerhouses such as SIT Sarah Esselborn at NYU Tandon, worship goddess Serene Shake from BU, and the big man himself-Regional Director Ben Courtemanche. Talk about standing among giants. I was nervous, but it helped that Misa was with me and that we could joke around with each other. WordPress won’t let me put a video of us in here, but use your imagination based on the pictures below. A fun fact that I was excited to learn is that Misa and I are in the same EDGE class! So that means when I go out to Colorado in 72.5 days (who’s counting?) I will already know someone there! And Misa is quite a someone to know, with his easygoing, friendly personality and bubbling energy.

Who thought giving us mikes was a good idea??

The last session!

Me up there solo!

In terms of content, this was one of my favorite conferences. Every workshop I went to was spot on, and our speaker Alice did amazing. I haven’t really processed through everything, but took away some great nuggets. Alice’s story was so relatable, and she did a great job of connecting with an audience of college students, which is a lot harder than you would think the older you get.

We ate the whole tube.

Notorious Noah and Danger Dan

Some USM folks

See if you can spot any familiar names on this poster from 2018!

Our speaker Alice

Time for a USM selfie

One of my highlights from the weekend was getting hang out with Hannah Chase from MMA. One of two girls from the school there this weekend, she is such a down to earth person. She is also president of their Navs chapter, and is doing her best in leading a wild group of boys from MMA! Hannah, I do not envy your job, but admire your courage to stay strong for Jesus at MMA. Y’all have no idea how badly I want to be placed there for EDGE. Alas, some decisions (OK, let’s be honest, all decisions) are out of my control. We did a quiet time together, and we prayed for our students together later on Saturday night, that they could learn boundaries and how to act honorably with each other. It’s a big prayer, friends. Keep praying! I wonder what next year will be like as a staff member…

One of our games Sat night

Still wrapped in toilet paper…

Alice PREACHING to these women!

The conference banner that we sign every year. This is my favorite tradition that we do!

Cookie game Sat night

The majestic Craig Parker in his natural state-a quiet time.

Other than that, it’s been slammed back here in Maine. Schoolwork, planning for spring break, women’s weekend looming in the distance, and I haven’t even thought about graduation (in 70 days, but like I said who’s counting). Wish me luck friends! I still haven’t recovered chore wise from being gone, and I have a lot to do before I breathe again. I’m still waiting on good ol’ Benny C to get back to me about my EDGE placement. I feel like I can’t wait any long, but of course, I will have to. I wonder what this conference will be like next year once I’m officially on staff.

On a different note-In response to what I was talking about in the last blog, in a moment of lucidity I decided in the most anti-Jenna fashion to sign myself up for counseling through the school. They offer it for free basically, so I figured it would be good for me. Other than not being used to talking about myself for that long, I thought it was great, and am actually excited to go back again next week. Praise God, Jenna finally got herself back in therapy!

Hope you’re all having a good time in the cat days of winter, I guess you could call it, opposite of the dog days of summer. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for some spring so I can be one with the trees again! Praying all your endeavors are proving fruitful. I hope mine are.

~J

“I love how we’ve only known each other for an hour, but we’re already best friends.”-Misa

So let me tell you about one of the worst days of my life. Intermingled into this post will be pictures of some very handsome creatures to make myself feel better. I hope they keep the overall vibe of this post uplifting instead of negative, even though I am sad.

This is a freakin pangolin and I would like one please!

This past Thursday, which ended up as you know being horrible weather, I woke up and felt no excitement or joy for anything that was upcoming in my life. Even the things that I do for fun, like martial arts or learning guitar. Much less work or school. Tonight I was even supposed to go on the very first date of my life, and did not feel any giddiness or excitement. Only a lack or hole of happiness for things I know I should be happy for. And it wasn’t just Thursday-Ive been feeling like this for a while. So this is the mindset I have been in to frame the rest of this day for you. 

I have been (sometimes happily, other times frustratedly) single since my junior year of high school, so I was uber expectant for what this date was going to bring. Our plan was to go out for a drink at a soda/regular bar in Portland and then go to the Eastpoint worship night. Alas, it all started to fall apart when my snail picture fell off the wall. 

I don’t, as a rule, believe in signs or mysticism or anything like that. However, I do believe in omens and that God warns us of things ahead of time. I have really good instincts (not that I follow them a lot) and am always preparing myself for the “worst case scenario”. I woke up super early that morning to take a shower and my roommate was going to do my makeup for the day. Out of nowhere, while both of us were in the room early in the morning just waking up, my beautiful snail picture taken by the lovely Jen Sawtelle (hi Jen) falls off the wall. My roommate and I like to joke that we have a ghost in our room that eats our cheese and knocks our stuff over. Now, I don’t believe in ghosts either, but someone or something at one point definitely depleted both my roommates and I’s bags of mozzarella cheese.

This is a dumbo octopus.

Taken right before school started this past summer

Taken on Thursday!

So as I am in my car about to leave, I get another feeling. So right before I pull out of USM, I checked the page and sure enough, the worship night gets cancelled too. After swearing loudly in my car, I called my roommate, and she swung back and picked me up to now carpool. So now you are probably at the point where you’re thinking, “this can’t possible get worse…”

This is the Fischer Cat-an american mustelid. Pretty cool!

Well, you’re wrong. On our way out of Gorham, I got an email from the journal I had submitted a paper to for publication. I spent SO many hours of my own time (because this was not for any one class) last semester writing a literature review about Maine state parks in hopes that once I submitted it, it would get published in this undergrad journal. My professor endorsed this project and thought I had a good chance. I was so proud of what I had written and wanted everybody I knew to read it. I did not, in fact, get published and the paper was rejected. So at this point, I start crying, and then my roommate gets pulled over by the cops for “going too fast”. She, thank God, only got a warning, and now I start crying even more because my bad ju-ju has now started to rub off on her. We get to Plato’s all excited to shop, and of course, because why not, they are closed because of the weather.

So instead, we went to TJ Max where my luck turned around a little bit and I found this awesome jumpsuit (coming to a semi-formal event near you), and we went home where I fell into bed after one of the worst days of my life. However…

I’m still alive and I have that to be grateful for. All throughout the day, I said to myself, “It can’t possibly get worse.” And I was wrong, ’cause it did. But now, a couple of days out from it, I’m sure it can only go up from here. Sometimes you have a terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day, as one of my favorite childhood books would put it. And I will get over it eventually.

Rawr!

So at the end of that sad story I am left here and now just…tired. I don’t even want to show people my paper anymore or present it at the undergrad presentations in April because I’m so embarrassed. I’m feeling hopeless about my love life (I guess there are worse things to feel hopeless about), especially moving into a season of EDGE.

…

Something I have been wrestling with recently is the verse “count others more important than yourself” has been haunting me for years. I am so tired of being a busybody, of being too encumbered to enjoy what I am working so hard for. But I don’t know how to STOP! I think its getting pretty bad-I had a friend pray for me while over at her apartment, and I felt myself and my body just flat out reject it. That happened because I didn’t feel worthy of her prayers, or worth hers but mostly God’s time. I had this thought, and found it incredibly funny-It’s not that I have low self-esteem, its that I have absolutely NO self esteem! Which, in turn, reminded me of one of my favorite statements that I believe with my whole heart which I would encourage you to mull on-

“All anybody ever wants out of life is to be treated with respect. But in order to be treated with respect, you have to be able to give it. In order to give it, you have to have it for yourself first and foremost. Otherwise you don’t have the gift to share.” -Kathy Buckley

I’m making my best effort to work on it. The first step is making the time to work through my shit, just me and God, which is harder than it sounds when all I’ve ever thought is that it is selfish to pray for and work on yourself when you could be using that time to help others.

I should know better by now, after being a christian for so many years, but I’m learning the difference between just knowing something and believing it with no doubt.

~J

Majestic creatures