personal narrative // i have to write this for school // this is a rough draft

                I had always thought it was cliché when people said the weather matched their mood, but today it matched mine. The afternoon sky was gray, and it was raining intermittently so that as soon as you pulled out your umbrella it stopped and as soon as you put it away it picked back up again. Summers in western Washington are lovely, but this day in early June was convinced we were back in gray and gloomy winter. Walking to my car in the student parking lot after school, I was alone and unhappy, mulling over all of the problems that were plaguing me that day. My best friend wasn’t talking to me, and I didn’t know why. My senior year of high school was drawing to a close and I was tired of school, yet at the same time afraid of the changes that were coming all-too-soon and also not-soon-enough. I was tired of fighting with my parents about stupid things that didn’t really matter but were ruining my last few weeks at home. And I was worried about having the money to pay for college. My aunt had offered me a job with her -- but she lived in Colorado, literally a thousand miles away from my home and my friends. But would that even matter if my friends weren't talking to me and my parents were always mad at me? I sighed as I reached my car, dubbed “Nicely-Nicely” by a friend, and unlocked the passenger door so that I could reach across the seats and unlock the driver’s side door from the inside.
Nicely was a second-hand car, and it lacked power steering, power breaks, and power locks. It barely had the power to make it up the hills to my house. I drove home slowly, wallowing in misery and going over and over my problems in my head as the windshield wipers thudded back and forth and the gravel crunched beneath my tires. I left my backpack on the seat of the car when I got home, having no intentions of doing my homework that night.

                “Don’t forget that tomorrow is youth conference!” Mom reminded me as I walked inside the house. “It’s going to be great!” Mom was terrifically optimistic, and she was particularly excited about working for the Special Olympics that weekend. Unfortunately, I did not share her passion for working with disabled individuals, and I was not at all looking forward to the trip. I hadn’t even planned on going, but considering my touch-and-go relationship with church activities and how unhappy this made my parents I had agreed to one more youth conference.

                “Yeah…” I replied half-heartedly as I walked to my room to finish wallowing and worrying.

                Early the next morning, we woke up and got on the bus that would take us to Fort Lewis. I put on a happy face for the benefit of those around me – Dad was a counselor in the stake presidency, and a lot of people knew me and expected me to be happy and gung-ho about things. So I used my most realistic smile and appeared to enjoy the bus ride even though none of my real friends were on the same bus as me and I most likely wouldn’t see them throughout the day. How wonderfully fun.

                Upon arrival, we were split up into groups and given specific assignments. As I suspected, I knew no one in my group and didn’t care to meet them. We were assigned to work the finish line of the races, which sounded boring but not too bad. Hopefully I would be able to just sit there and not have to actually do very much. Maybe I could even catch a nap. The morning was still cool so I zipped up my jacket and settled in for what had to be done.

                As the day progressed, the sun began to peek out from behind the clouds and warm us up a bit. Walking back and forth across the grass and the red tartan track, I was surprised to realize that I was really enjoying what I was doing. It wasn’t anything super important, in fact it was somewhat menial – taking the paper that  had the race times recorded on it from one tent to another. But getting to see the expressions on the faces of the athletes was magical – I’d never seen such determination, or such unbridled joy on a person’s face.  Their emotions were so openly displayed, and it was so incredible to see how happy they were just to cross the finish line, no matter what place they came in. Some were more competitive and shouted funny insults to the other athletes, while others cheered loudly for the people racing alongside them. Their conditions were varied - some had Autism, others Down's Syndrome, and still others were confined to a wheelchair. Regardless, they all were there to have a good time, and I was determined to do my part to make that happen. 

                “Here, these are their names,” said one of the official workers, handing me a sheet of paper. “Pick one, and be their cheerleader. It’s the funnest part!” I accepted and looked at the paper.

                “Go, Nancy!” I shouted. Nancy’s eyes lit up and she picked up the pace as she crossed the finish line. Everyone cheered like crazy.

                “C’mon, Sarah! You can do it!” One by one the racers crossed the finish line, cheered on by hundreds in the stands and those of us volunteering in the tents.

                 When there was a break between races, I ran to get lunch and quickly ate it so that I could get back to working. 
                 "Do you want to do this?" one of the official workers (I coldn't remember her name,) asked me when I returned, gesturing to her stopwatch and clipboard.
                 "What?"
                 "Here, I'll show you. Just run the stopwatch and record the times here on this sheet, then note who takes what place. But make sure you're on the right page and that all the athletes are in their proper lane. Got it?" I nodded and sat down in the metal fold-out chair she offered me. The handheld walkie-talkie they gave me crackled and a voice asked if we were ready for the race to begin. I checked my sheet against the track in front of me and radioed back that we were. The athletes lined up at the starting line, and at the signal they raced around the track to wild cheers from the volunteers and the people watching from the stands. Coaches soon hounded me, needing to know their athlete's time. Dozens of people crowded the table, clamoring for information.
                "What was the time for the team from Olympia?"
                "I need Lane Hughes' time please," 
                "Who took first in the wheelchair relay?" 
                "Did Jessica States come in third or fourth in that last race?" 
                I could barely keep up with everything - running the stop watch, writing down times, making sure everyone was in their proper lane, radioing to the person above me that we were ready to start, handing the right form to the right volunteer, and getting the right information to everyone who needed it. I was too busy to think - but I was having the time of my life. I'm not half bad at this stuff, I thought to myself. I'm a quick learner. I can do things. I'm smart and capable. Go me. I smiled as the lead athletes rounded the track.

                “You can do it, Marleen! Don’t give up Joe! Just a little bit farther! Come on, you can do it!” We all continued to encourage the athletes, and I loved watching them succeed.

                When the last athlete of the last event had crossed the finish line and had been cheered for and high fived, I reluctantly picked up my things and walked back to the buses with my new friends. 
                "Can you believe we worked ten hours straight today?"
                "I know, it totally didn't feel like it!"
                "I wish we could stay longer..." 
                "I wish we could come back tomorrow!" 
                "Let's definitely do this again next year," I said as we reached our charter buses and met up with the rest of our group. The adults passed around boxes of Little Caesar’s pizza and we all dug in, laughing and joking and sharing stories about the best parts of our day.

                “One of the athletes fell down on the track, and so Jacob and I had to take care of his friend who kept saying, “I am so concerned!” while the first aid workers took care of the injured guy,” said Peter during the bus ride back, making us all laugh with his perfect impression of the worried voice. 

                 "They kept pulling pranks! Like one guy would pull the chair out right before his friend would sit down, and then the really funny part was the guy would complain to me, he would say, "you guys have a moving chair problem, I know a guy who could fix that for ya." He never knew it was his friend pulling the chair out!"

                 "There was a guy that constantly asked me and Nathan where places were, and he wanted us to point, like, "where's Canada?... Point!" So we pointed north, and then he'd act like he knew that already and he was just testing us. He'd say "Yep, yep,""
                "That same guy knew like every song by every band! We would say a band and he'd start belting out his favorite song from the artist," said Nathan.
                "This was like the best weekend ever," someone said, and everybody agreed. 

                When we finally got home late that night and talked as a family about the experience, we couldn’t stop laughing and smiling. I couldn’t understand why it had been such a great day – I hadn’t done anything especially "fun", I had barely seen my friends, and my problems were all still there. But it had been perfect to just not think about myself at all for one day and to serve someone else and witness such amazing examples of charity, purity, and goodness. It put everything back into perspective and made it all okay for a little bit.

                The next day, after church, I drove the long way home. Spirit 105.3 was on the radio, and I was humming along. Nicely-Nicely still didn't have power steering, locks, or windows, and the weather was overcast again. But this time I was struck by how even though the sky was obscured by the clouds, I could still see the light from the sun, and I could still feel its warmth. The sun was up there, somewhere. It would come out eventually, and shine brightly, and make the world warm again. And until then, everything was going to be okay.

                
                And that is the story of the overcast sky, and the day of service that made my life not suck.


// inspired by this and this