December 31, 2008

all.night.long.


tonight while most of you will be with friends, family, at home, wherever celebrating the new year.

chad & i will be with 100+ students & leaders celebrating around the city. an event we all know of & i hate... ALL-NIGHTER!

we have been doing these events (at only this time of year) since we have been youth pastor's... 8 years.

i'm hoping my husband gets smart & will not plan one one year. (ha ha) never going to happen.

i am not a night person. in my college years & o.so.almost ten years ago... yes! but since getting married & having kids i go to bed by 10 or 10:30. that is the way i like it. but on this one night out of the whole year my schedule changes & i have to stay up ALL.NIGHT.LONG.

with the event coming & me dreading i have a little bit of a bad attitude. (i know, i know horrible of me) but while praying & reading yesterday morning i was once again reminded that life isn't always about me or what i would rather be doing.

its about keeping those students out of trouble. having some place so they won't go to that friend's party & drink something for the first time or go a little further than they thought they would ever go, see & hear things that will damage them forever.

this is why we plan in detail a whole night of fun, shred tons of paper, blow up bags of balloons for a confetti drop at midnight, stay up all night, tired for the next two days, away from our own families... for them!

it will be fun. i will have fun once i get there. just dreaded the lack of sleep. so today i will be lazy, stay in my pj's until i have to get dressed & head to the church.

now you know what i'm doing to bring in the new year... what are your plans?

whatever they are... i hope you're safe & its a blast!

talk to you in 2009!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds fun! Hopefully you can sleep tomorrow. I've got no plans. Stay home and play games with the kids all night probably. Happy New Year!
-FringeGirl

Sarah@Life in the Parsonage said...

Man do I relate :) When we were youth leaders it was an over-nighter EVERY new years eve. The kids LOVE them, because they can recover from them...us, not so much :)

They were fun times though!

We have a new years service and then we're off to church friends for a couple hours and then to other tiny-town friends till midnight. We're party animals.

Kelli said...

We have a "lock out" like this at our church, but ours is this February. I know you dont enjoy it so much, but know that the kids appreciate it. Our youth leaders really dislike this event also, but they know we love it.
My family is going to my Aunt Nora's house to play games and do fireworks tonight for New Years.

Anonymous said...

I'm with ya on the all nighters! I don't know how I ever worked overnight on Saturday night for over a year then over the summer.??? I can barely make it to 8pm now, getting up at 5am to be at work at 6. Geez its 6:59 now I think i will go to bed.

Connie

Anonymous said...

I am SO with you on the all-nighters. One of the drawbacks of youth ministry. :)

Hope you have fun anyway!!!