::jumping in feet first::
"Jump in and be all there." A friend told me this years ago when I left home for the first time and volunteered for 4 months at a Christian camp in Uruguay. It made me think of jumping off a diving board into the deep end of a pool. You breathe in, jump, and quickly become submersed within the water. It surrounds you. It's all you can see. You're in a world completely different than the one you just left. It is both beautiful and strange. The analogy isn't perfect but you get the idea. Jumping in can be really scary because you usually don't know what you're about to jump into and even if you do, it still can be anxiety-producing. The unknown petrifies most people. Perhaps you want to just dip your toes in, see if you like it, and then you'll decide to get all the way in or not. Perhaps you want to start slowly wading in, going at your own pace rather than doing it all at once because that would be too overwhelming. Personally, I'm the kind