From the Dreams of Jerah:

This year was my third workshop, yet this will be my first post-workshop rant. I’ve never been able to find the right words to describe how wonderful and life-changing the workshop is, and I doubt I’ll be able to find them now, but I’ll do my best. The real struggle will be typing this all up without bawling.

When I first arrived this year, I was shaking with anticipation of the awesomeness that was to come. But I couldn’t have known how different this year was going to be. I’m still not sure if I’ll ever know exactly what made this year so different, so… special. It might be the combination of many different things. This year, a lot more new people came, including many of my friends who I had never met in real life before. Also, several people told me that I had changed. Maybe that was one of the things that made everything so different for me. I looked at things differently this year. I valued it more than I had before, and I didn’t want it to end.

I didn’t participate much in the prayer group, and when I did I usually only joined in on the last fifteen minutes or so. But nowhere else have I ever felt the presence of God stronger. On my way back to the dorms one night I stopped by the prayer group and Jonny led everyone in the song “How He Loves Us.” Now, I’m not one to cry over songs. I have never cried over a song before. But when we all finished singing I felt tears stinging my eyes. Singing this song with my friends and feeling how close God was at that moment was overwhelming.

The week felt strange. I mean time felt stretched, as if each day was a year. Yet when the week ended I kinda felt like “That’s it?” While it was happening it was so slow, but once it happened it was gone and seemed like it had only lasted an instant. Once Friday night came, I wanted to grab ahold of my friends and never let go. I was crying and I wasn’t ashamed because leaving my friends so that I can return to a lonely world is something worth crying about. I found my Rivendell and I most certainly didn’t want to leave.

People at my church kept trying to understand why I wanted to go to this writer’s workshop instead of going to youth camp to them. They told me, “But you need to go to youth camp!” And what did I say in response? “You don’t understand. I am going to youth camp.” Even when I tried describing the workshop to them, they didn’t understand. Finally, one girl in my youth group told me to describe what the workshop was for her in one word. I was silent for a moment. I couldn’t properly describe the workshop with all the words in the world at my disposal! How was I supposed to describe it with just one? But then it came to me. I looked up and her and quietly responded, saying one word and one word only.

“Love.”

~Jerah Miller/JayJay