If you've asked me what I'm doing with my summer anytime over the past two years, I will have told you that I'm working at the Clemson Outdoor Lab, in Camps Hope and Sertoma, because that's what I've done with my last two summers and it's what I'm doing with this one too (and hopefully a lot more after this one!) It's the best thing I've ever done and I love it with all my heart. I have learned so much about myself and others at Camp. I've learned a lot about how to ask for help, and learned that that's exactly what other people are around for, but most importantly I've learned about how much I need Jesus.
Camp taught me how much I need Jesus because I am all of my campers. I'm the campers who are really dependent on me as their counselor and know it. They're the campers who need me to cut up their meat and help them in the shower and bathroom. They're the campers who, if I don't help them, sit still and don't do anything. They are helpless. They need someone to take care of them so badly that they don't even know that they need someone to take care of them.
But more than that, I'm the stubborn campers. I am every camper who thinks she is my counselor instead of the other way around and tells me what to do and does not let me help her when I know she needs it and yells at me when I ask her in the most polite way I can to do something. I am the camper who hates her counselor just because I want to be in charge.
And that's exactly how I am with Jesus. I need him more than I need sustenance or clothes or hugs or anything else ever. But I am so stubborn and I just want so badly to be right. I want to know what is best for me, and I don't like being dependent on anyone else, King or otherwise. It's very sinful. I'm very sinful.
But Jesus voluntarily and daily is my wonderful counselor! He is my Prince of peace, my everlasting Father. And not because His daddy told Him to be. Because He wants to! Because He loves me, He chooses to spoon-feed me (or fork-feed me for certain foods I suppose) and wash me white as snow even though as soon as I get out of the bath I'm going to get dirty nasty again and He does this over and over. Every single day. He doesn't get paid for it and He doesn't get time off twice a week and Saturday nights off as well. He has better things to do, yet, every day until He comes back and takes me to Heaven where we get to be together forever, this is what He is going to do. Because He loves me and He wants to do this for me. I'm so blind and stubborn that I neglect to thank Him constantly, but I should. He is King of Heaven, yet simultaneously and willingly, Lord of me. It's not fair, not even a little bit. His mercy is more than a match for my heart, which wonders to feel my own hardness depart. Dissolved my His mercy, I daily fall to the ground and take up my cross to follow Him and weep to the praise of this mercy I've been shown!
I have loved working at Camp. It has been an honor and a pleasure to learn this, as well as so many other things, but I have to be honest...Camp makes me nervous.
When I was in the shower yesterday, I had a small panic attack. I suddenly felt like I couldn't breathe and I felt so confused and I wanted to cry but I didn't. And it was because I started thinking about Camp. I started thinking about how there are only two and a half more weeks until staff training starts. Only two and a half more weeks until freedom and sleeping in and staying up late and Kangaroo slushies all the time and doing what I want are shut down. The more I thought about the things I'm going to lose when I go to Camp, the shallower my breathing got.
What? Camp caused you to have a panic attack? But Laura, you love Camp!
Okay yes I know that. And I know that I just wrote a lot about how much I've learned from it and how great it's been for me. But Camp is hard. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. I say that to people all the time, and somehow saying it makes it feel more casual and less true, but it is absolutely the hardest thing I have ever done. Every time I drive up Camp Road, I feel anxiety pushing me down. It presses on my chest until all I feel like I can do is turn my sassy car around and go back home and not get out of my bed for a couple of days.
But I don't. I always keep driving down Camp Road, loosely following the speed limit of 15 mph, then I park my car and go put my keys/phone/wallet down in Betty's Place, then I go back and find my campers. And then I hug those babies like I haven't seen them in a year and then they tell me about everything they've done in the six hours since I've been gone (because when you only have a week with someone, six hours feels like a year) and then it's like I was never gone. I forget my anxiety and I jump right in and don't think about the fact that pretty much everywhere else in America has air conditioning except for here (and probably Alaska because it's already cold there so they probably have their heat on) and I forget that there are probably a lot of fun things going on tonight in Clemson that I won't have the opportunity to attend, because I'm here. But I chose to be here. And I want to be here. There is no place I would rather spend my summer. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that.
Camp is a place that requires me to be selfless, and I am not a naturally selfless person. Nobody is, because we're all sinners. Even awesome people are sinners, although sometimes it's really really hard to believe that.
When I'm at Camp, it doesn't matter what I want to do. We're doing what's on the schedule/what our campers want. And that's really good for me, and I have SO much fun at Camp, and, most importantly, it's what I am called to do. I am not at Camp to sleep (even though it is important that I sleep as sleep is a necessary human function) or to not sweat (because that's just impossible), or to benefit myself. I go to Camp to serve others. I go to serve my campers and fellow counselors/supervisors. And if I start thinking that I'm at Camp for myself, I won't enjoy it at all. I go to love my campers as hard as I can. That means loving them when I am tired of them. It means telling them to go back to bed in a nice voice and not yelling. It means hugging them and letting them sit on my lap even though it's over one hundred degrees outside and I feel like a furnace instead of a human. This might be my campers' only glimpse of Jesus, and it is up to me to represent Him in the best way that I can and show them the unashamed and always love of Christ.
Camp is a very uncomfortable place. I've had some of my lowest lows there, and I think most of the staff has seen me cry multiple times and for multiple reasons. But that's why it's my second home. Because there are not a lot of places where it makes sense to celebrate one person putting their head underwater for the first time ever. There are not a lot of places where you can hear from a mile away the singing of a song about a banana. There are seriously not a lot of places where I get excited about vegetable trays for staff snack. And there are not a lot of places where I know that even when I mess up really badly, I have the support of and free hugs from everyone I know.
Camp is my family, and I know I will be loved and accepted there this summer, the next summer, and a summer twenty years from now when I go back to visit and the staff has changed. Camp is where I belong.
Love is always louder at Camp Hope! We are better when we're together; Camp Sertoma needs us all!
Love,
Lauralicious
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