Last Nav Night :(

The semester is drawing to a close, and just as on Tuesday we had our last FRESH, tonight we had our last Nav Night. :(. Until tonight, I didn't realize how much I love coming together and worshiping with these people, several of whom I don't really even know. I mean, I definitely knew that I loved Navs, and that I love Nav Night talks and singing at Navs, and all that, but just the act of going and being together with people and worshiping with them, and being unified in that is so great. I feel like I really have a family in Navs. At After Navs, (where we all go to a restaurant and eat together after Nav Night), I was looking around the table, and while I may not have known every person at the table super well, or even really a little, I still felt like I belonged. And I felt loved. I have friends here at Navs. I'm sorry to see it end.

One other thing about Navs all semester, that I really noticed especially tonight. Nick, our campus director, is very very open about his life. He talks about his struggles, his problems, his faults, he talks about his relationship with his wife, and the places that he falls short in their marriage, he just speaks so honestly to us. And I mentioned it long ago, (I read it a couple years ago at church in a small group) but I'm re-reading this book  by Kyle Idleman called not a fan. about living as a completely dedicated follower of Christ, and in it, he says this: "living in the power of the Spirit means shining a light on our weaknesses." And I think that Nick is really good at doing that. In fact, Abby is also really good at it. She's also very honest about her weaknesses. And I'm jealous of that. I'm so jealous of it. Because I think that one thing that I struggle with is lying, even to myself, about my weaknesses. I don't physically wear make-up, but it's like my spirit is wearing make-up, trying to hide all my flaws, and I've gotten so good at putting it on that even to me, my weaknesses are basically non-existent. But here are Nick and Abby and Kayley all standing here, clean-faced, showing me their real faces, from their blond eyelashes to their reddish, splotchy skin, to the zits that dot their forehead and chin. And they can see through my makeup, even though I can't. Now, that's not a perfect metaphor. I do see a lot of my weaknesses, but at the same time, I don't. It's kind of hard to explain. I know that I'm flawed, and that I sin regularly, but my actual "weaknesses" are a little harder to pin down. So this summer, I think I want to try and change that. In fact, this is about to go on my list of hopes/dreams/goals for the summer. So yeah. Last Nav Night. It's a bittersweet moment, but God is definitely a part of it.