Graduation Day

This is so surreal. I can't believe we are graduating today. Almost every intern I talk to says, "It hasn't hit me yet."

We all spent the morning packing up a few last things and checking out of our apartments. It was like move-in day, except that I knew everyone now and everything was happening in reverse.

Fearless Leader did my hair for graduation and then checked me out. I was the first one officially gone...took Loch over to her new digs to drop off her bags. Now I am in the prayer room, listening to Ron Downing doing a solo devo set. A bunch of interns are in here, too...CJ, HoB, Buffer, Monty, Dib, and a few others. We don't have anything else to do until lunch, which will be pizza (our last Sunday pizza lunch -- how sad). Pickle is going to load the pizzas into his truck and drive it over to the Herrnhut clubhouse. We are all going to sit on the deck and eat together. Then we meet in the Multipurpose room at 1:30. Graduation will be at 2:00. Afterward we will have some finger food and possibly some tears as we say goodbye.

A lot of us are coming back, but we will all be doing different things, whether it be the Night Watch, FSM, FMA, or leadership for OTI or STI. We will never again have what we shared for six months: a community of almost 50 men and women who were all going the same direction at the same time. We heard the same teachings, ate the same food, and moved as a unit. We became an army, even. Tracey Sliker got a word for us late in the internship: we are prophecy bees -- we move as one in the prophetic. Give us a target and we will come together and speak the L-rd's heart over someone. We prophesied over a bunch of the IHOP leadership during our 12-hour day, and of course we prophesied over each other any chance we got. The unity was pretty amazing, yet it was a completely natural development.

In some ways I would like to live that half-year again...I never have had fellowship like that before. I love the internship community and I will miss it tremendously. None of the other internships, not even Fire in the Night (except for Track Two, maybe), had what we had.

I'm trying not to view the internship through the proverbial rose-colored glasses. It was so hard...the awkwardness of that first month, when I didn't know if I would make any friends or if G-d would ever convince me that He actually did like me; the "trench months" of February and March, just slogging along through five briefings/debriefings per week and so many hours of teaching; the constant cycles of depression; seeing my friends hurting; struggling with loving people rightly...

...and then the weird floaty feeling of a month of tracks and fewer briefings; the unreal feeling during Fun Week -- and now here we are, ready to graduate. These six months were amazing and horrendous at the same time. But we ran well together, and we have all changed so much. None of us have remained unaffected by our time here. We are almost completely different people, and we love Jesus a whole lot more, even though we still don't know Him the way we want to know Him.

As Withit would say, this was the longest first date of my life. But I like the guy a lot...I think I'm going to marry Him.

P.S. Our official pictures.