Happiness and joy. Passion and excitement. Purpose and confirmation. 

No words could really describe the feeling of perceiving, those, of whom you have invested a shear volume of your resources in, come to a level of growth and maturity. There is a joy in knowing that the time, energy, and patience you spent investing yourself in the lives of young adults, has come full circle. To see the results of three months of arduous attitudes, brushing shoulders, and legitimate push back, and how it stimulated growth. 

I've led three times in the past year. It was tough. It was frustrating. It was difficult... 

...and it was worth it.

You have questions that race through you mind, well, I do that is. I wonder, what, if anything, had changed?

Had the changes that occurred on the field been maintained? Were they able to still function in society and yet express the growth they had experienced? Were they still walking in their gifts?

This is me. I ask lots of questions.

There is nothing like feeling like you have failed miserably, to think you missed the mark, to feel you have screwed up your participants lives, only to be proved absolutely wrong. What a release of pressure it is to come to realize that you did everything you were supposed to do and it turned exactly how He planned it to. 

You come to a realization that those of whom you invested in, now were walking through their process of abandonment, brokenness, dependence, calling, and then to confirmation. They got it. They had been radically changed. They were not the same, even from five months prior. They grew. They matured. The embraced their identity, their calling. 

Needless to say, no fears resided in me. Instead, overwhelmed by joy and hope, consumed all of my being. I played a part in their development. And to be honest, they will be better than me. They got it faster than I did. They pressed in longer than I did/could. Their hearts went for it when mine hesitated and pondered too long.

...and honestly...I am glad. It is how it should be. I set the bar, the ceiling, so that their floor is so high off the ground, they have to start at my highest point. I wouldn't want it to be any other way.

Today, I learned or really, re-learned, I will never know, how far my actions, influence, and pressure will play in another's life.