Persistence in Purpose

This reflection looks at my summer internship and the tensions that arose from being in leadership for the things I love.

This past week was go time for my summer internship. I am an intern at Northpoint Church in Austin, TX. By go time, I mean that it was the week of Camp 75. Camp 75 is our summer experience to get students and family plugged in and more involved in the church and to go into our community to make people feel welcomed and tell them that God loves them. This past week was the outreach part and we had almost 40 groups of middle and high school students go out to neighborhoods in our area to play and teach children. As an intern for this program, I felt a weird tension between wanting the week to go great and have no big problems and wanting the week to go on forever because it is what I love to do and be a part of. There was also a lot of waiting because the students were leading at this point and it was very cool to step back and see the development that we had trained up in our students and what God was doing in their hearts. However, I love to do things and I love to be involved so this was another pressure that evolved that was being so thankful to be in a supporting role to train our students but also wanting to be on the front lines with them.

These pressures that arise were new and more complex problems to deal with than I really had dealt with before. I was confused emotionally because I was both sad and happy by the time the week was over. I was both sad and happy when I would send my leaders off to their host homes. I was both sad and happy to have had such a great team of interns to work with that I now had to say bye to for a time. I know that through these pressures I am growing and am able to be more emotionally aware that while I may be experiencing both ends of the spectrum I am able to know that the purpose behind what is doing created a long lasting emotion of joy while the thoughts in my head can bounce all along that spectrum. I am grateful to have done this internship to learn that among many other things.

Moving forward from this summer I aim to get a job in the corporate world which in my head is going to be much different from the nonprofit church sector. As I go into this process of finding a company I know that knowing my purpose and the value I add to the firm is going to be one thing I need to define if I am not given one, in order to really excel and find that long lasting joy. I am excited to do that and to realize that these complex pressures do not determine my mood or the purpose behind what I am doing but are a part of the ride and are allowing me to grow and know myself more.

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