Ah, Summer. The time of year where to-do lists really get their time to shine as everyone promises themselves that they will have a barbeque, kiss in the rain, make lots of craft, hold down a job, stay out all night, meet new people, explore a forest...
It's also the time of year when endless blog posts come up about this, with people posting goals (whether it be for a bikini body, achievements or simply things they would like to do). Often, because of this, summer is treated as this golden period of opportunity where life is at its fullest, especially while you are still at school and the adrenaline of freedom kicks in. There are endless questions on how you will be spending summer and the thought of merely sitting at home is berated.
My experiences of summer have been varied but I can say that the best summers haven't been the ones where I have been on lots of holidays or explored the world around me, but the ones where I have grown, changed, matured and tried not only new things, but challenging things. The most memorable summer is the summer of 2009, the summer where I had no friends to hang out with other than my sister.
I had made a wrong move, lost all my friends and was living in guilt and shame. I wanted school to end badly but found myself even more isolated trapped inside my house. My only outings were with my sister to Shakeaway (I calculated that I spent around £40 on Shakeaway in the space of a few weeks that summer) where we would sing walking along the road and wear matching harem trousers. I watched a copious amount of TV but felt a real emptiness in my life. Yet I was moved. I was forced to confront the mistakes I had made which caused this dramatic cut off from community. Until that point, there was always someone to point the finger towards, someone who provoked what I had done. In a summer of loneliness I saw that I had been hiding behind that and exposed a lot of lies that I was believing about myself, others and the world around me. I had been believing that violence and anger were excusable reactions if provoked, that my insecurity absconded me from punishment, that paranoia was damaging my friendships and how I saw the world around me, that my heart and all its desires were set on all the wrong things. I was moved, I believe by God, to a state where I realised that I needed to be forgiven, and that I didn't need to work for it. I longed for my friends to show forgiveness to me as well as the forgiveness I believe that I already have received through faith. But then my thoughts progressed: I longed to have the strength and courage to forgive the friends who had given up on me, provoked me, made me feel insecure and paranoid and anxious, had failed to support me through my counselling and therapy and who I didn't trust enough to tell them how I was feeling. I longed to repair relationships, to regain confidence in my abilities and release anxieties that were weighing me down.
I found that at the foot of a cross and it changed me. Never before had pain brought me such joy. It is a dark summer that ended in light.
I remember the first day at school when we got our timetables and the girl who I had directed my violence at the June before was in around two thirds of my classes. I braced myself for a hard year of proving myself and trying really hard to change but there was something else working which released me from that responsibility. A few nights later, a facebook friend request that had earlier been denied set my heart on fire. Forgiveness was mine. Friendship was restored. Faith became real and exciting.
I was baptised the next January and a journey began that took me to other summers on beaches in Wales that stirred up a heart in me to take 'good news' to London, to walk over Tower Bridge everyday to embark on a journey to the East side to serve lattes and engage with community. Five years after the dark summer, my life is changed and renewed and my faith is as real and exciting as ever.
Maybe your summer is shaping up well, maybe it is looking miserable. Don't romanticise summer as if it is a magical period of contentment and happiness - it surely won't live up to it and be filled with more boredom that BBQ's I'm sure. Summer is a chance, if you have the time or invest in the time, to search your soul and find what is wanting. It might be a qualification, an experience of volunteering, a friendship that has been slack, it might be rest. It might be discovering what true hope and life is once all the routine and rhythms have been removed. I hope that you will find it where I did.
-Antonia
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