It’s April—which is a significant fact because that
means May (the month of my college graduation) is next month! The month is very
busy even after graduation. The same day I graduate, I’ll be heading to camp
with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in New York for a few days of reading
the Bible and focusing on God. Then I’ll be home for a day or two before I head
off for a Disney World vacation with a group of my senior friends. Again, I’ll
come home for about a day or two before heading off for a job at summer camp.
Life is certainly going forward at full-speed.
It’s nice, in all this forward motion, to get some
time to relax and reflect. On the weekend of March 21st to the 23rd,
I was able to do just that through Susquehanna’s Christian Fellowship Retreat
at Mountain Dale Farm. Every semester, Susquehanna’s Deacon of Spiritual
Nurture organizes a retreat for students. I have been attending these retreats
since my freshman year and have valued the time to escape campus for a while,
bond with other students, and grow spiritually.
This semester, we reflected on what it means to be
spiritually awake or spiritually asleep. Being “spiritually asleep” might mean
only going through the motions of your faith or generally being apathetic. To
me, being awake means being an active participant in one’s relationship with
God. I personally felt woken up by the weekend. I had been more engaged in
reading my Bible there than I had been for quite some time, which was an
awesome feeling.
Though the retreat was great, it was definitely
bittersweet. I’ve become attached to the drive there through middle-of-nowhere
Pennsylvania, to Mountain Dale Farm, to the deer heads mounted on the walls and
the mismatched couches in the room place we call “The Room of Death,” to
candles in a cross formation in the middle of the floor during worship, to
games like Catchphrase, to intimidating geese, to lazily sprawling out on the
couches during free time, to talking through life with a prayer partner, and
most of all, to the great people that come each semester. The last night of the
retreat was one of those times where graduating really hit me. It was the last of something important to my
college experience—and I knew a lot more lasts were on their way.
That night, the senior girls all decided to sleep over
on the couches in the “Room of Death” instead of going to our cabin. When I was
an underclassman and not all the girls could fit in the cabin, upperclassmen girls often ended up
sleeping over in that room. None of us had ever done it, so we took our chance.
I don’t think any of us got great sleep, but it was worth it for that memory
that felt so college—a bunch of girls sprawled out on couches pushed into a
circle, chatting and reminiscing in the dark as we curled up underneath our blankets
and sleeping bags.
My friends and I hope to go back to Mountain Dale
one day for a reunion of sorts, but if that never comes to fruition, I had a
great final retreat that I’d be happy to call my last Mountain Dale memory.
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