I suppose this week comes for everyone sooner or later...

This week as I sit down to write my reflection, I’m sensing a familiar feeling. It is the feeling I used to get in college when Wednesday night rolled around on a week I was supposed to write a column for the opinion page and I had no clue what to write about. I would hope that maybe someone else had felt inspired to write about something so I would be off the hook. Sometimes it would work, and other times I would sit in front of my computer staring at a blank screen until I thought of something I felt passionate about. Columns were notoriously my least favorite part of being on the editorial board of my university’s newspaper.

But alas, here it is, Sunday afternoon, and no one can write my reflection for me … so we’ll see what happens…

It’s not that there’s nothing going on worth writing about, or that God isn’t teaching me anything – because I’m sure he is … it’s just that things are starting to settle into a routine here and almost feel normal. My weeks are somewhat predictable – though not in a bad way. I finally feel confident in my ability to call most of the kids by name that come to the Boys and Girls Club on a regular basis. I can look forward to square dancing every Monday evening, having a Sabbath on Friday, and getting a ride to Mass on Sunday.

And then there are the other little treats that vary from week to week. This week those things were harvest festivals and trick-or-treaters, having a cough as the only remaining evidence of last week’s cold, getting treated to lunch by the children of a woman from my church, celebrating the 7th birthday of a neighbor, learning that the same newly 7-year-old’s little brother likes to call me “Miss Becca” (yet somehow Rachel and Katie are just that – no Miss), the Tour of Tables, petting a cow, and finally having clip art to “kick it up a notch” in the bulletin, as Father Don would say.

So, I suppose if I could pull a common thread or lesson out of my rambling attempt at a reflection, it would be that it is already November. Soon it will be December and time to spend several weeks away from this community that feels more and more like home as time goes on. In realizing that I should cherish all the recurring and surprising events of my weeks before they are all gone and another YouthWorks! summer is here again.

Until next week (when, with any luck, my writer’s block fog will have lifted),

Becca