Season 1, Episode 3: Passion
Camp.
Four letters, one
syllable. Doesn’t seem like much. But to me… To me, camp is the world.
I go to/volunteer at/work
at an overnight Christian camp in the middle of Wisconsin, about two-ish hours
from where I live. It’s called Camp Awana, and don’t worry, I’ve provided
pictures at the bottom to show you all how breathtaking it is.
But anyhow.
My last blog post was a
pre-camp/post-school roundup. I covered pretty much everything that stressed me
out, and what I was concerned about with camp, and what I hated about the
school year ending and practically everything that ran through my head in the
three days before I left for camp.
Coincidentally, camp was
amazing.
Was I right to be
worried?
In my opinion, yes. As I briefly
mentioned in my last post, I spent a lot of the last year pushing people away,
when in reality, they wanted to be
there for me. But I just kept pushing the envelope that was our relationship
until it finally tore, and I felt it had been irreparably damaged.
But hey, what did I say?
“I will make it through”
Shocking plot twist up
ahead- I did.
Camp was… a unique
experience this year. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted
to be staying up for as long as I was- because I was afraid of how some of the
people I had pushed away would react- but by the end of my month up there, I
felt changed, which is another interesting thought. I’ve been going to this
camp for nearly a decade now, and I’ve never felt such a tangible change in my
heart before.
Allow
me to give you the shortest (which will probably end up being the most
distracted) recap of this year’s camp experience that I can. I’ll try to divide
it up by week, or at least by program, so you won’t be too confused. Also
beware, chances are I’ll introduce some people to you- have fun remembering all
of their names!
SOLID ROCK (week 1)
Matthew
13:44 "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field."
First thing you need to know about Solid Rock
is that it’s the camp’s Co-Ed high school program. We divide up into four teams
(by cabin) and ultimately compete for a prize at the end of the week.
Now Solid Rock this year
threw me for a loop.
If any of you are
familiar with the story of Joseph from the bible, you would be aware that he was
a wise interpreter of the prophetic dreams of others, and had prophetic dreams
himself. (If you’re unfamiliar with Joseph, I’d suggest checking out Genesis 37
&, 39-45. It sounds like a lot, but it’s a fantastic story.) Recently I’ve
been connecting more and more to his story, mainly because as of late I’ve had
about four different dreams that I’ve reviewed, thought were ridiculous, and
then have occurred.
So when I began dreaming
about Solid Rock about a week before I left, I knew something was up. I had a
few ridiculous nightmares that were so fantastic that I almost instantly
disposed of them as nonsense, but then I had one that was just a little too
real.
You see, for Solid Rock
they divide us into four teams that all have assigned colors, and then, usually
on the first full day of camp, they announce the captains for each team. Each
team will have a boy and a girl, and usually they’re some of the oldest campers
on their teams. I had this fantastic idea that maybe this year, since I was
going into my senior year, I would be chosen as a captain. I’m pretty active up
at camp; most, if not all of the leaders know me; I’ve got a good attitude… My
list of reasons that I should be captain marked me up to be a pretty decent candidate
in my mind. So when I had a dream that they announced all of the captains, and
all of the girls were fellow workers, but not me, I woke up concerned.
That dream was one of the
things that started developing more of my anxiety for camp. If I was already
worried about not being accepted by my friends, then what would I do if the
leaders didn’t want to accept me either?
With that in mind, I spent
the remaining two days at a friend’s house baking and venting and playing music,
sending ridiculous geography puns to another friend of mine, and deciding what
to pack for my four weeks.
Then, the night before
camp, all of my doubts and fears and worries about camp came to a head. I spent
the whole night awake, searching my bible for something to help me calm down,
trying to reach out to my friends, but ultimately just feeling sad. It was
nerve-wracking, and generally didn’t bode well for my pre-camp emotions.
But I made it! I got up
to camp, and then found out I was on a team with some of my best friends, the aforementioned
(Episode 1: Pilot) Faith, and another good friend of mine, Claire. And then the
captain announcements started happening, and I braced myself for the imminent
humiliation, but then… It didn’t come. I wasn’t chosen to be a captain, but
then, neither were any of my other close friends up there, so there was no “wow, I’m so much worse of a person than she
is…everyone must hate me…why couldn’t I have been captain?” in my mind. In
fact, I was elated, because one of my favorite people in the world (cough,
cough, *Faith*) was chosen. I was so
excited for her, and relieved that my humiliation hadn’t occurred that I
physically felt a weight come off my shoulders at the prospect of not having to
carry those thoughts around with me for the rest of the week.
But back to my point.
Solid Rock started off, and was decent. It wasn’t terribly impactful, so I sat
there, and I took notes during the messages like a good child, and then stored
the relevant information in my mind and started over again the next day. In fact,
in the first four days, I only had two interruptions to that schedule. One was
my realizing during the song “Your Love Never Fails” that when they say “You stay the same through the ages, your
love never changes” it meant that my God was the same god who was with
Moses, Abraham, Joseph, Noah, Esther, Elijah, Jacob, Joshua, David and so many
others, and I’m not going to lie, that floored me for a bit. The other
interruption was my losing my voice. Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE to sing. I generally won’t shut up
at home, and even when I’m walking around at school, I’ll be humming or singing
along to some song in my headphones. This, not surprisingly, bleeds into my
actions at church and camp. You see, camp is one of the few places where I have
been able to feel entirely free to worship my God. All I need is some music, and
suddenly my eyes are closed, my arms are out to the sides, and my throat is
burning with overuse in reaction to my passionate response to God through song.
Now, I’ve lost my voice at Solid Rock for four years in a row, but never in
those four years had I ever lost it on the first night.
Plot twist.
It happened. And for
someone like me, who’s musically inclined, I had a hard choice to make. Either
I would keep singing loudly, potentially damage my vocal chords from the stress
I would be placing on them, AND have to put up with the sound of my now-offkey
voice trying to match pitch, or just not sing. Initially I tried singing along
in a much lower key, but eventually, I grew tired of hearing myself be wrong,
so I ended up standing and existing in the worship. When I say existing in the
worship, I’m sure some of you are like “errr, what?” and rightly so. It’s not a
common thought. See, what ended up happening is that I would be standing there
and I would just be. I would fully immerse myself in the groups of people
around me, and absorb the energy of their praise, because I knew I would push
myself too hard if I did otherwise. I allowed myself to become attuned to the
feelings of the people around me and was able to pray with them after messages
because I had realized that something was wrong. But most of all, I was able to
see God working. When you’ve spent so long with your eyes closed trying to
protect the sanctity of a moment, sometimes you forget to open them back up and
cherish it for all that it is. And that’s exactly what had happened. When I
wasn’t singing, I was able to open my eyes, both literally and metaphorically,
and see what was happening around me. I saw God softening hearts, I saw him
speaking to people, and comforting, and bringing them joy and peace and love
and forgiveness- and it was astonishing.
In opening my eyes to how
He was working in the lives of others however, I felt like God was closing some
of his usually doorways to me. On Thursday night, I walked into our rec center
(where our morning and evening messages were presented) and felt an immediate
change. Where before I had been passionate, and full of a variety of emotions,
now I just felt blank. There was no anger, no irritation, no gladness or
hopeful expectation. There was just a blank slate, a tabula rasa, sitting on my heart. And that scared me. Boy, did that
scare me (I’ll go into detail about that a bit later). Ultimately I pulled my
friend Faith out of the worship area, and she held me while I tried to explain
it to her and while I just cried on her shoulder. I was scared that I had done
something wrong to not be feeling anything towards anyone, man or Divinity, but
she calmed me down and assuaged my fears, telling me that well, God just doesn’t
work that way.
It was a strange moment.
I’ve never been so vulnerable, and yet so guarded.
Solid Rock was great. It
was decent because of the activities, good because of the people, and amazing
because of the messages. But one of the things that our evening speaker said
really stuck with me. He said, “Solid Rock is a great thing, when we invite God
to be here. Without God, it can be a dangerously good thing.” That thought,
that seemingly oxymoronic statement, hit me hard.
I had invited God into
camp, into Solid Rock, into others’ lives, but not into my own. As soon as I realized
that, it was like an electrical switch. I was hardwired to send my brainwaves
to God and for Him to send me energy, strength, and power back. All I needed
was to make sure everything was connected properly. Once that happened, Solid
Rock was beautiful and reflective. It was well planned, well executed, and well
appreciated. All the way down to the last few minutes, I was laughing and
enjoying myself, and feeling blessed to be able to serve my God.
But
one of the most important things I think I learned throughout all of Solid Rock
was how to actively listen, to God, myself, and others. I spent the majority of
the week listening to myself, but not to the parts of myself that were crying
out for God, but rather to the parts that told me I could handle it on my own.
I spent most of the week listening to the words people would say, but not
registering them until much later. It took a while, but after finally getting a
glimpse of the big picture, I was able to listen to God and invite him into my
heart to take the place of my fears, my shame, and my anxiety, and let “Jesus
Take the Wheel”, to quote Carrie Underwood, and it was beautiful.
FAMILY CAMP (week 2)
Matthew
5:6-8 "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God."
You may be asking, “If
she wasn’t in program during week two, then what exactly did she learn?”
Let me tell you, there
was plenty. In short, we combined the girl and boy workers together for bible
hour every day and we discussed the Beatitudes found in Matthew (5:1-12).
Weirdly enough, I had
never heard these before, but I really enjoyed hearing and learning about them.
Ultimately though, I’ll
tell you my favorite part of this week. We, as a worker program, made
encouragement cards for all of the workers. They were sheets of paper that had the
names of all the workers on them and we would walk around and write an
encouraging note on the papers of everyone but ourselves. It was really cute,
and I loved it, because it meant I got to really think about how to encourage
the people around me- which I LOVE by the way- and so I was going around and
writing them, and suddenly I got a glimpse of one of the notes on mine. It said
that I was truly a genuine person, and that authenticity was something hard to
come by these days. That stopped me for a while. What exactly constitutes an
authentic person? Someone who doesn’t change? Someone who isn’t afraid to be
his or herself? I considered it to be a combination of the last two definitions
I gave, and so to me, it was a very flattering comment to come from one of the
worker leaders who I felt barely knew me. So I considered it. I thought about
it, I prayed about it, and that comment about my authenticity made me think.
In my eyes, my
authenticity lies in my unbridled passion for God. I have no doubt in my mind
that when we get the opportunity to worship up at camp, people look at me. I’m
not a quiet worshiper, as I mentioned earlier. My goal is to praise my King,
and if you happen to see me along the way, then perhaps my enthusiasm will get
you on the bandwagon too.
So
now, as I’ve returned home, I want to strive to see more of that in myself
everywhere I go. I want to see myself taking the risks that I never thought I
could venture out for. I want to see me pushing myself to achieve the goals
that God has placed on my heart. Most of all, though, I want to see me being
unabashedly unashamed of myself- created in the Lord’s image, and who is loved
and treasured enough to be called His daughter- and of my God.
GIRL'S CAMP (Weeks 3
& 4)
Psalm 19:14 "May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer."
Let's just start out with saying that Girl's Camp was WEIRD this year.
Weird because I was one of the older kids, weird because our Mariners (high school girl) program went from a group of 24 to 50 (ish) after one week, weird because of the theme... Everything about it just seemed a bit odd to me.
By the time Girl's Camp (GC from here on out) rolled around, I had already had most of the important conversations that I felt needed to happen with people, so I was looking forward to classic scripture memorization.
Maybe that's weird on my part, I don't know, but my favorite part of GC has never been the leaders that I've had, the games that I've played, or the people in my cabin, but always the verses that we've memorized.
Week one this year we had two goals: Philippians 4:4-13 and Psalm 19, while week two we had Psalm 8 and John 1:1-14.
I found it funny that I had just referenced Philippians 4:13 in my last post, especially when you consider that I had sung a song in choir this year based off of John 1:1-14. So many connections were made there that I was terribly amused.
And then there was camp itself. Not going to lie, this year's GC was probably the best one that I've ever been a part of, and while it was my last year as a camper, GC had a lasting impact on me this year- which I'm not sure it has in the past.
As a whole, Girl's Camp was a breath of fresh air. During the first week, we did a bunch of puzzles and things as activities, and as a whole, I found them to be very affirming. I LOVE puzzles, and seeing that our theme was Sherlock Holmes, I was pretty ecstatic all week. We also had a running theme throughout the week- "it's coming". The leaders, the lodge director, the bible hour teacher, and the activity director kept saying it all week, until finally, one night during our devotionals (my cabin was watching a movie, conveniently), the leaders all banged on our cabin doors and yelled "IT'S HERE!" and told us to go down to the beach. We ended up going glow in the dark blobbing, watching I Love Lucy, and making snacks over a campfire. It was pretty fantastic, and we had a lot of fun 😊. As a whole, the first week was really neat. We had a small group, maybe 24 girls, and our teams were about 6 people each. My team did a great job, everyone got Honor Bible-including one girl who had never gotten it before- and ultimately we won the prize for that week, which was neat, because the last time my team had won was my very first year at camp. It was great 😊.
Then the second week happened. We just about doubled in size, my team took a downward spiral in terms of Athletics, but an upwards spiral in terms of spirit and cohesiveness. We weren't aggressive, we learned well and played well together.
What was interesting about week two was one of our topics in Bible Hour.
You see we talked about what our heavenly names would be and what we'd want God to call us when we got there. Our Bible Hour teacher asked us to really consider that, and then write them down on a sheet of paper by the end of the week. So I thought about it a fair amount, and ultimately decided on Passionate.
I want God to look at me and say "You put all of yourself into representing and worshipping me, and your passion for My word is evident."
It was remarkable to see what kind of a difference it made in my interactions with people when I chose to react with passion towards God, and react with His patience towards others.
In the middle of the week, another neat thing happened. I sat down for about three days and compiled a bible for a close friend of mine, with verses and passages highlighted and explained to help her out in times of trouble, the same way a friend of mine had done 4-5 years ago for me. I spent hours poring over the verses I wanted to analyse for her and pouring my heart out onto the intro pages, and finally started to realise how much our friendship meant to me. It was surreal.
But one of the most amazing parts of the week was the end.
You see our Girl's Camp used to offer this award that they gave to one or two people a year, called the "Teach Award", named after one of the camp's founders. Recently they've done away with that award, and replaced it with the Lighthouse Award. It's so named because it's based off of a set of verses in Ephesians, 5:8-10:
"8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord."
What's so neat about this award is that they usually give it to seniors, but I figured that I had the two or maybe three people pegged already. So when they started reading off the names, I was excited to hear that my guesses were sound for the first two. And then the activities director started reading the third description, and talked about asking questions and furthering faith, so I instantly thought "oh, that's Caroline!" A few seconds later, however, my reverie was broken by "and so the Mariners program is pleased to award Amanda with the 2015 Lighthouse Award."
I was shocked, because I had won the old Teach Award about four years prior, and didn't think it was logical. But so it goes. It happened, and it made me appreciate the song Children of Light (link at bottom) a lot more.
All in all, camp was brilliant. I don't really know how much more I can say.
Signing off,
Amanda
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