Fruits of Labor

I am beginning my fourth year living in Miami. Other than Troy, this is where I have lived the longest. This year though, marks a new beginning chapter of my life. For the first time since I moved down here, I will not be starting a brand new school year. Even though I graduated last December, it still feels like a new start, a fresh start.

There is one marked difference in this year that stands above the others. This year I start an August not affiliated with the FIU-MDC Wesley. Many of you may know that I was living in an intentional community  that served as a central location for a majority of Wesley events. Also, there was a heavy compnent of community within the house. But long before moving into the Wesley House I was involved with this organization from nearly the very beginning. And now after nearly three years, I really see my role diminishing, nearly to the point of not at all. This is something that I wrestled with for a really long time, and I really believe that this is the best course.

Now, I can't help but reflect on the time that I spent with Wesley. I can't help but think about where I could have been more involved, less involved, and where my strengths could have been used more or less. But don't mistake this for regret or would've could've should've. No, think of this merely as an evaluation and a learning experience; a base from where to go now.

I really feel like that when we leave a project, job, school, relationship etc., we like to look back and see what impact we had on it. With any luck we will rest assure that we left that project, job, school, relationship, etc., in a  better condition than we found it; that we had a positive impact on it. And often times I fell that if we really don't feel that we made as large as an impact as we could have, we tend to consider it as an opportunity lost. And while we all could have done more, there is an equally large if not more important side to the story, how we come out of it.

We like to see return on investments. But often times what we invest in, we will never see.  But those investments don't fail. They yield dividends far greater than what will be seen. This is how I feel my time with Wesley was. I feel that the people that I was around invested so much in me in ways they might note even know they did. Though what they don't know is that their investments were not in vain. My time with Wesley taught me more than I could put into a few paragraphs, more than could be stated in a few posts. But I know that because of Wesley, I'm a better person. And even though Wesley may not see the direct effects of the time energy and money spent in me, they can rest assured that others will see the fruits of their labor.

For me it's often hard to leave something with a feeling that I could have done more. But in this case I will take the fact that I got more out than I could have possibly put in. Which sometimes, I feel, is what we all need. Sometimes it's good to be invested in. And now more than ever, I feel the need to take that labor and make certain that it fruits.

~B