Very important thing to know about me: I like using song titles and song lyrics as titles for blog entries and as facebook status updates.

The weekend of the ACYL Canoe Cove camp started with a tradition I am very used to- fears, expectations and parking lot. I had quite a few things on my mind the week prior, but once I put them all in parking I was able to relax and fully enjoy the camp. The only problem was that when I left on Sunday I left those issues in parking lot. Coming home after camp is an emotional experience in itself and I assured myself that once I got home and gave myself some time to settled back in the "real world", I would be ready to clear out my parking lot.However, the longer I left things in parking lot, the more I wanted to avoid dealing with them altogether. I spent the next two weeks working and hanging out with several of my friends; when a parking lot issue threatened to ruin my mood, I would simply ignore it.

Last weekend I went to another leadership conference, and to prepare myself for it, on the way there, I did my own personal fears, expectations and parking lot. Everything that I had put in parking lot at ACYL, which I never really picked up, got re-parked. The conference was a great experience, and the environment there was an intensely positive one. Coming back home, I jumped back into the keep-busy-and-avoid-parking-lot routine I had after ACYL. But after a couple of days, I noticed how miserable I got when I thought about those issues, and how much effort it took to push them aside and try to forget they were there. Avoiding the issue became a lot more difficult than dealing with the issue itself, so I finally got up the courage and began to face what I was attempting to forget.

I have tackled two of my major parking lot issues and I am feeling much, much better. There are still a couple of things I need to do, and I'm worried about how they will go, but I know running away from problems doesn't make them go away. Being able to put problems aside for a period of time is a useful thing. If I had of been focused on my life back home while I was away at camps, I wouldn't have been able to fully participate in the experience while I was there. But even more important than being able to remove your focus from your problems for a while is being prepared to come back and handle them again.