camp

So, camp.

     /// THE BAD PARTS

It started out as anything else that starts. I was surrounded by strangers who were already friends with each other. This time was different, though. It was really hard for me to want to get to know people deeply, which felt and still feels very strange, like a piece of my personality has been stolen. 

Camp has been all about being tired to the point that it is my new normal. I fall asleep around 1 every night and my body consistently wakes me up around 6:30 every morning. Add heat exhaustion and constant intense physical labor and you get unbelievable back pain, headaches, you name it.

And staff is hard. As in, I’ll be coasting along enjoying myself and then realize that I was left out of something, or that I’m sitting at a table and everyone’s talking to somebody else. Things like that. Things that I do my best not to read into or take personally, because they’re not personal, that’s just the way life works. But things that make me sad anyway. 

I don’t have the same commitment and loyalty to the camp as other staff do, because I haven’t worked here long enough to see its purpose yet. It’s been 33 days since I came to camp and I don’t feel any particular emotional attachment to it. Maybe it’s because I’ve got one foot out the door already and nobody else does. I can convince myself when I stop at the bridge to look at the creek, or when I have a fleeting sense of belonging, but I keep on dreaming of New York and the future and wondering how to get there, and feeling like camp is just a waiting period between where I was and where I want to be.

I have two jobs this summer. I’m on Teen Hill as a girls’ counselor for 11 days, and then they leave and the boys come, so I’m down at main camp running the rock wall. The two jobs could not possibly be more different. As a specialist, I feel like camp is what it’s supposed to be, and the kids matter and I’m here to care about them. It feels like a job. It feels like ministry. Everyone on staff hangs out and it’s great. But as a counselor the past session, I felt like I was turning a heavy crank in a factory, where all I needed to do was get my campers out to the other side and onto the buses and home alive.

Each day it got harder to push the crank. One of my campers ran away and I followed her through the woods for almost an hour. One of my campers had a family member pass away. One of my campers was bipolar and had random fits of rage all the time. Several of my campers were sick for most of the session. AND we had an insane spiritual attack the last night of the session that resulted in three girls going to the hospital, two of which were demonically possessed.  All during those hard 11 days, I tried being Jesus to my girls by serving them in any way I could. It just didn’t end up being very relational, more just like survival.

     /// THE GOOD PARTS

Camp has had good sides as well, like my unit staff and being around them, and just the fact that I'm out in nature every day and it's beautiful. It's also extremely satisfying to do basic physical labor, like lifting things, walking up hills, belaying kids at the rock wall, walking everywhere. Even though I'm not getting enough sleep, I feel more physically powerful than I ever have: tan and lean and strong enough to hike up a whole mountain!

I'm learning a lot about myself. Such as, I'm really confused about what I'm doing with my life more than I thought. I don't give as good advice as I thought I did. I'm not as kind as I'd like to think I am. I'm also both stronger and weaker than I think I am.

I'm also learning that I'm very lucky to have things to miss. I miss Kate, Mel, Lauren, Elia, my MEP staff, my first team, the theatre, ResLife family. I miss playing gigs with the Pillar of Salt guys. I miss Grove City. Not in a painful or wistful way, but just in the way that I know I can't really ever truly go back, and that's okay. I know I carry this community with me as I head into the next chapter of my life, both by strong love for those people but also by the wad of letters I have already received at camp. God is looking out for my semi-lonely, transitioning heart. 

Which brings me to the best part. 

Most of all, this summer is teaching me a lot about God being a provider. My prayers are digging deeper into my desperate need and God's goodness more than ever before, because it has become necessary to my survival. 

Physically unable to walk up a hill, ask him for strength --> I walk up the hill in no time at all. 

Laying hands on a girl trying to strangle herself to death --> crazy sense of peace and his presence.
Running through the woods chasing after my least favorite camper, ask God for his blessing over the situation --> filled with an incredible, incomprehensible love for her.

Talking to a girl who shares her story of being raped and her recurring nightmares, ask him for more of the Holy Spirit in the conversation --> I show her my scars from cutting and she shows me hers, we end up going to the farm and playing with a baby cow and laughing.

MY. GOD. PROVIDES.

YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP.

And I can't supply myself with peace, strength, kindness or anything on my own. I really can't!

Perhaps it is for this knowledge of more of who my Lord is that I am in the wilderness this summer, between the woman I was at college and the woman I will be next in this vague next-ness. 

It's the knowledge I hold tight to my chest and do not let go as I read and reread the reply from the last fellowship I applied to, the last possibility, and try to cosmically understand their kind "no, but we only hire people who are 21 and older" email. It's the knowledge I grasp at as I scroll through job postings I am not qualified for, look through peoples' facebook pictures of trips abroad or fun vacations, listen to my friends talk about falling in love. 

All at an acceptable time. 

I hold back my bitter "why not me, Lord?" It is not the right question.

How foolish would it be to question God's goodness now? After all that I just experienced in the past month? What has God done at all this summer to prove that he won't provide for me?

He's shown up in so many enormous ways that asking him for a job is very small and silly. 

I pray my fear grows smaller in my heart to make more room for the Spirit inside of me to move around and rearrange more things.

that's about all I can say for now. 

ON A FUN NOTE

Here's my cultural educational videos for all my super white friends out there like myself. Be enlightened.

Gurl you ratchet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oBlnb5orJo

Ghetto christmas carols: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtW9V9PJDHU

Kotching/wining (Jamaican-style dance my campers were showing me, go to 1:30): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYAqRLR_1_s

Wobble (how have I never heard this before? Totally dancing this at my wedding): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siqrFpXBvBU