Dear friends,
Thanks for your prayers for me these past few weeks. Camp has been really wonderful and I am so glad I decided to be there. I love it more than I can remember loving it in my past years, and, although this past week was really hard, it was awesome. There was one point in the week where I got really mad at a camper. It was the maddest I had been in a long long time. I didn't tell her that I was mad, but I just refused to forgive her, even after she apologized. The whole time I was mad at her, though, I thought about how I wasn't wishing for her to go home, I just was mad at her temporarily.
Also this week, I started having so many doubts and insecurities. It was so rough. There was a voice in my head and it said to me: "Laura, you are nothing but a skinny little white girl. You don't look good in a bathing suit, specifically a one-piece, which is unfortunate for you because you have to wear a one-piece for Camp. Your yelling voice is screechy and shrill and no one takes you seriously ever. Your campers don't like you, and the reason they sometimes act like they do is because they don't know any better. They would have more fun with another counselor. Any other counselor but you. You should just go home and sleep and never get out of bed and never try to do anything ever again."
It was really hard. I got really close to crying a lot. The funny thing about Camp is that it's a pretty bipolar job. All the time, I'm either having the time of my life or about to break down really dramatically in front of everybody. My emotional state changes without notice and rapidly.
But I love it.
I decided that coming to Camp for the first time is kind of like High School Musical. You're doing your own thing, minding your own business, but you know where your place is. You don't break the status quo, because it's just an unspoken rule. And then you come to Camp and it's mass pandemonium in the most absolutely beautifully semi-structured way possible. There are no cliques or groups or social status-y type things. Everybody is just a person.
And you realize that this is how it's supposed to be. A mix of personalities and strengths is the best way to live. We help each other and feed off of each other and love each other. This is probably a little bit terrible, but some of the people I work with at Camp are people that I really don't think I would be friends with if I didn't know them at Camp. But because of Camp, I'm friends with such a variety of people and it makes me so incredibly happy.
After having some serious doubts about whether I am qualified/equipped in any way possible for this job and a lot of prayer, I noticed that people appreciate me for who I am. There are people in this world (and a lot of them are at Camp) who like me even though I have horrendous posture and I'm probably the worst archer ever and I eat my Smarties weird and I independently, without the assistance of any campers, have spilled liquid on me at mealtimes three times in two weeks this summer: coffee, water, and Cocoa Puffs milk. It was gross.
And I think that's why campers like it too. Nobody is judged on their personality or level of functioning or abilities or whether they can speak or whether they have ears or anything else. You come to Camp and are welcomed as a person. If you do something wrong, there are consequences, but unconditional love that is resilient and redemptive, just like the love that Jesus Christ shows me every moment of every day and illustrates to me through my campers, when they are being easy to love and when they are making me cry.
I am fascinated by the fact that I meet campers on Sunday of each week, and they leave Saturday, and we build such relationships in those six days. In real life, six days is not enough for you to make eight new best friends. But at Camp, it is, six weeks in a row.
Saying goodbye to campers is like plucking your eyebrows. You're a little surprised by what it feels like the first time you do it, and it's unpleasant (disclaimer: saying goodbye to campers hurts a whole lot more than plucking eyebrows), but you have to keep doing it. It just must be done. So every time you pluck one, you gasp. You know what it's going to feel like, but that doesn't mean you won't feel it. And you keep plucking until you're done. And your face feels hot and itchy and then you take it easy until you feel a little better. And then you go about your life, and then it's time to do it again. And it's no fun.
This week, I said a bad word to a camper. Before you freak out, you should know that that bad word was "sucks." I normally would not say that to a camper, just so that I can be a good example to them, but here's what happened: she ran away from our evening program Friday night crying because she didn't want to go back to her group home and the weather was a little scary and she was definitely tired. So we were talking in the bathroom, and she was in a stall with the door locked, and then, with her permission, I got on the floor and slid under the door so I could talk to her face-to-face (that part isn't relevant to the story, but I thought it was funny. I used to think it was so fun to slide under bathroom stall doors when I was little and I realized when I was doing it the other day that it had been so so long since I'd done that). So we talked, and she told me about the group home, and how they have her on a gluten-free diet, and she doesn't like it, but she does like Ezekiel bread since she's allowed to have that. And then she remembered that her mom was having an eye surgery and she got really worried. She was working herself up into an emotional tizzy. So you know what I did? I'll tell you.
She was sitting on the toilet, and I was on the floor in front of her, and I took her hands in my hands, and I looked her in the eye and said, "You know what? Growing up sucks, doesn't it? It sucks." And she agreed with me. And then I sang to her, "You Are My Sunshine" and let her calm down and then she was happy again.
I loved my beautiful lovely ladies this week. We had the time of our lives. And then they left me, and then I went shopping and got some American-themed stuff for next week, and now I'm thinking about next week and which of my campers can't have any acidic foods and how old they are and their activity level and anything I could possibly need to know. I'm getting as ready as I can for next week, and I unfortunately had to sweep my lovelies from last week back a little in my brain. They're still there, and as the summer progresses I'll find myself randomly having flash-backing to them and the funny things they did and the memories we made together.
Love,
Lauralicious
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