missing.

written april 14, for my other blog, and forgotten in my drafts. i see it as a God thing that i found it today.


last night i dreamed about camp. i do that a lot, since i think about it so much, but this was one of the ones that it's hard to wake up from. one where it feels so real that i'm actually shocked when i wake up and realize i'm still here. i was actually trying to wake up from reality, because i figured there was no way i wasn't actually back home a minute ago.
nothing that special happened in it i don't think. i remember no details, no people, just, being there and doing my thing. but that's always enough.
i woke up at 5ish am, crying so hard i was shaking, and i always feel stupid for that. why do i have to miss it so much, all the time? why can't i be happy with being someplace else? it's just the way life works: camp in the summer, real life for ten months, repeat. but i can never seem to adapt to the real life part.
camp has my heart. and i'm so afraid of what i'll be like when the day comes that i don't go back again. i don't know if it would let me take it with me; it loves camp. it won't take too well to leaving.

lately i've been coming to terms with the fact that this won't always be my life. unless i plan on being the director one day(i don't even want to be a unit leader, much less climb even higher. not happening).
if lucy, or heather smith(that's not her name anymore, but it was when she was my unit leader so i still call her it), or britnie reid all had to leave one day, i will too. someday, my time will be up. i pray every august that God will let me have one more year, and that i'll know when it's my last, because i want to be AT camp when i realize that i won't be back. so i can walk through every little bit of it one last time. especially the most important places; the bed in cabin 10 where i was saved, the ropes course where i learned everything i need to know about life, the walk-in refrigerator where we celebrated every week after mopping, the OLS field where i learned how to pee in the woods(serious accomplishment), the lake where me and amber did all our bonding and venting and note-writing(and of course some lifeguarding), and unit 2...oh unit 2.
i annoy myself with how prone to missing things i am. especially with camp. i wish i could go just one day without wishing i was there. one day without being homesick. it's not that i don't love my normal life, or that i sit around all day missing camp. i don't have this debilitating separation anxiety, but there's about 60 seconds a day that i just want to be in my real home, doing what God made me for.
i hear about missionaries who miss their work so much during their stateside time that they almost wish they didn't need a break. in ICS last semester we learned about this one woman, i don't remember her name or what country she worked in, but she went this huge amount of years and never took a furlough. that's how much passion i have for camp, only they make me go home at the end of every summer. if my break between summers were optional, i would live there and never come home. even if there were no campers, no other staff. i would take all my classes online, and when i wasn't busy with school i'd spend the rest of my time hanging with Jesus, walking around praying for the next summer, taking pictures of the lake, raking up the paths through the ropes course so there's less work in orientation week...and whatever else i could think of. i'd get lonely though.

i had a friend once who told me that every time i miss someone, i should pray for them. that way i wouldn't be as sad, and everybody would benefit from what i normally wouldn't like. maybe i can do that for places too.
what will happen when i leave for good? if i miss it this much while i know i'll be back in a month and a half, i don't want to think about what it will be like when i don't have another summer to look forward to.
i don't think God would ever call me away without first showing me my next purpose, because i feel like without this one, i would be too lost to notice when the new one came.