HAGS: Have A Great Summer

For years, this lame, but admittedly catchy, acronym has filled millions of yearbooks belonging to hopeful young students desperate to hold onto the idea that summer is, for some reason, so much better than the rest of the year.

Now, I understand that summer is the one time of year that young students get a real break from school. Even better, those too young to work, don't even have to have summer jobs (necessarily). It sounds like a win-win and maybe it is for a few years.

But what about when summer stops being a break? What about when summer starts to look the same as the rest of the year? What about when summer turns into sitting in a café, writing articles, planning events, and drafting letters for your summer jobs?

Nobody ever warns us that summer eventually stops being summer. At least, nobody warned me. The summer before my senior year was filled with a summer job, but that was about it and there was plenty of time left over to sleep and to spend time with friends. Skip forward to the summer after my sophomore year of college, that's now, and ask me how busy I am. I'm working two jobs, writing an article a week, getting ready for a ministry I will be helping to start when school resumes in the fall, preparing for at least two trips in which I will be working in some capacity, all while juggling family and friends.

So what happens when summer is no longer summer? I'm busier than I have ever been in my four semesters of college. At first, I just wanted to go back to when summer consisted of sitting on the couch watching iCarly until my mom drove me to some babysitting job across town. Ah, those were the days. Those were the days when summer was still summer and life was much simpler.

But these are the days when summer has turned into only a much hotter version of every other season. It's still just as busy and I'm still lacking sleep. But this summer, I have learned that these are the days when summer is no longer about myself, but about everyone else. How can I use my time out of school to impact others? How can I focus my time and talents on helping those in my community now that I'm not focusing on grades?

Summer is no longer summer, but it is something so much greater. It's a time to pour into people in my community. It's a time to invest in the people I interact with while I'm at work or connect with people who are touched by my articles. It's a time to spend way too much time babysitting and pouring all of who I am into precious kiddos. It's about building relationships amidst the clutter and chaos of life. It's about being a vessel. It's about learning who I am. It's about being who I am.

This is summer. Welcome to it.

HAGS.