You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t totally make sense in this post. This could be for one of the following reasons:

A. I can’t think straight after having spent the weekend saying “Go. To. BED.” about a trizillion times. And the high school girls were hard to get to sleep, too.

B. I got up way too stinking early because I was scheduled to speak at the church we were at. The morning after a lock-in. Because that is excellent scheduling, no? Who doesn’t like someone falling asleep on stage while holding a microphone?

C. I have just woken up from a four hour nap.

D. All of the above.

If you chose option D, you’re correct! And now, in order to give you all the details, I embrace the list format:

1. Those girls were so cute. I mean, SO CUTE. A small group of them, including one girl who had never been to one of our events before, sat and talked hair with me for a very long time. When I got up to leave, I overheard one of the girls say “See, I told you Amy Beth is awesome. She knows hair.” to the new girl. And yes, a tear came to my eye.

2. Instead of taking our 11 member band (we even have a violinist — jealous much?), we went acoustic and low-key. One bright spotlight on the stage; the rest of the room’s lighting came via candlelight. And it was excellent.

3. During the night, the girls sneaked out of the room (literally stepping over the Starlite volunteer who was asleep right in front of the door). Their reason? To take all the free sanitary items out of the women’s bathroom and decorate the room very… creatively.

Note to self: call church first thing tomorrow and offer reimbursement for, um, that stuff.

I actually took some video for you. I woke up about an hour before our alarm (for the leaders and volunteers to get up) and recorded myself sneaking to the light switch and then flipping it on while singing my very own rendition of “Good Morning To You, Sweet Starlite Volunteers.” Unfortunately, this video will not be airing on MinSoFab as not only did all of my leaders threaten to quit Starlite if I showed a public video of them with morning hair but also because a certain Starlite leader (cough, Laura, cough) might have uttered a few naughty words directed a yours truly.

What can I say? I seek to serve.

And so, another fabulous weekend has ended. On the way home, one of our leaders and I were talking about the inevitable “let-down” feeling that we always experience on our way home from events. This one is particularly hard to “get over” because the girls we were serving this weekend are from a economic background that is unlike what you and I are used to. During the worship time last night, I prayed with a 15 year old girl who has horrible, vile things happen to her. Things that aren’t fair to her, to anyone. And yet right before she climbed onto the bus to go home today, she kept thanking me over and over again for taking them to McDonald’s for lunch yesterday. What is normal to me — mundane, even — is a treat to them.

And so we had McDonald’s for breakfast again today. McDonald’s twice in 24 hours definitely equals Best Event Ever in teenagers’ eyes, especially when they’re not paying for it.

As for me, I’m skipping dinner. I just woke up long enough to tell you about the event, answer the 14 text messages I missed during my nap and get a cold glass of Sunny Delight. And now that all of that is accomplished, I’m going back to bed.

I can only hope they’ll be no video cameras rolling when I wake up in the morning.