On the road again...

Come Saturday, I'll be heading back to the homeland (aka North Carolina) for three-ish weeks. I'm fortunate enough to have two weeks of "service to the greater church" built into my job description, largely because of the fact that most of PSF's students are gone for the summer. Workin' my way down I-40 I'm going to lead a small group at the Montreat youth conference next week, then a few miles down the road I'll spend a week volunteering at camp. After that I'll be using my remaining vacation days to go on a family reunion in Michigan.

I've realized that I have really mixed feelings about these upcoming adventures. Don't get me wrong, I'm eagerly awaiting rounding a curve on the interstate and catching my first glimpse of the North Carolina mountains, and getting to spend two weeks there. And I genuinely enjoy spending time with family (which I count as a major blessing). But I've also become quite attached to Nashville. And the other day I realized that, taking into account my upcoming traveling, I essentially have one month left in Nashville. One. That's not very long. At all.

And things will be different this time around, in the mountains. Montreat is familiar enough, but this will be my first time at a youth conference and I'm responsible for a small group. My only time spent at camp has been when I was on staff (not counting the half-week I went for way back in like 1995), and this time I'll be just a volunteer for the week. Seven days is a lot less than two months.

Adding to the strangeness of this year's camp experience, today I learned that camp's Site Supervisor (aka Maintenance Magician) passed away last night. Besides the fact that I'm pretty sure Dennis could fix anything that broke ever, he always just drove camp from project to project in his red truck waving and smiling and making friends. Surely something will feel a little off at camp this summer. For a long time probably, because Dennis, if you ask me, is a pretty irreplaceable person. Dennis, if you're reading blogs up there in heaven, we love you and we'll miss you so much. Thanks for being a wonderful person and for everything you did for camp. And to whoever happens to read this: please just keep Dennis' family in your thoughts and/or prayers, and throw a few prayers in the direction of the Camp Grier family and this year's summer staff as they start the summer off on this sad note.

All that said, as I mentioned in the beginning I think I'll still love my time in North Carolina and Michigan...I just didn't anticipate having such mixed emotions, I guess. Someone told me once, just a few weeks after I'd moved here, that I would fall in love with Nashville. And I'm fairly certain he was right.

We'll see how it goes, this processing that's going on right now. Not being ready to leave, but knowing how important to me the places I'm visiting are. Maybe I'm just getting ahead of myself, too. I do have all of July and a week of August to soak up Nashville after these upcoming adventures...

Love,
Allison