jericho and ai.

read the black for the main points.
read the blue for further elaboration on them.
read the red for sidenotes that aren't absolutely necessary.
so you can read just the black, or the black and the blue, or all of it, but not just the blue or just the red.

today was the most amazing chapel message i've heard as long as i've been at ciu. by amazing, i mean spoken-straight-from-God-to-me. i've had a good few of those, but usually those make me kinda mad since they usually are the convicting kind that mean God wants me to start doing something that i kinda don't want to. but this was just the comforting, check-this-out-i'm-bigger-than-you-but-i-love-you-anyways-isn't-that-awesome kind.
dr murray was of course the one speaking; he's my fourth favorite of everybody(after jeremy kingsley, bill jones, and adrien despres).
he talked about jericho and ai, and what we should learn from each.
and he described my past two summers at camp.
jericho is all about joy and victory. everything goes right, you and Jesus are on top of the world together, and you can't wait for the next chance to do something like it again.
that was 2010. i've already written plenty about it, so here i'll just remind you that it was unbelievable. "joy" is always among the first words that come to my mind when i think about that summer, but it was full of victories on victories too, whether camper-wise, friendship-wise, or personal me-and-God-wise.
i left that summer so incredibly excited for the next one.
but i did NOT take away the lesson that we're supposed to learn from jericho experiences.

DON'T PRESUME.

or to put it in more specific terms: no amount of victory in your past assures me of victory in my present.

that was the first great mistake of 2011. it hadn't even begun yet and i was already totally assuming "okay, i've got this, last summer rocked, i'm great at what i do, this won't be difficult at all" and other such big-headed thinking. and i completely expected it to go down just as well, if not better, than 2010. i was constantly comparing the two in my head.
2011 was an ai experience. ai is all about "sadness and defeat." there are no two better words for this summer. "sadness" especially for orientation and week 1, (week 2 was actually a randomly thrown in jericho) "defeat" especially for week 3(i have nightmares about that week. i never ever want to think about that week), but the whole summer was full of good amounts of both.
what are we supposed to take from ai?

DON'T DESPAIR.
narrow it down: no amount of defeat in my past need rob me of victory in my present.

and that is the more important lesson of the two, for me at least. i don't struggle so much with getting prideful about my past victories as i do letting past defeats ruin all my other attempts at anything.
on a less important-to-life note, i do this in soccer too: the first shot that comes at me determines how the entire game goes(or even just a practice). if i block it, i have a great game. if i miss it, i lose all confidence i may have had and let in every single shot after.
after week 3 was when i shut down for the whole summer. all my mistakes from that week just haunted me every single day: i'm a bad cabin leader. i don't know how to love my girls or get them to listen to me anymore. maybe i'm not supposed to be here. and i can't sing.(this horrible child told me she hates it when i sing to them at night, and when she said that, four others agreed and said they just hadn't wanted to say anything)
but while that was definitely the worst week of my career, there wasn't a reason in the world for it to affect the rest of the summer. just because i had one bad week doesn't mean the rest couldn't be great. but i kept letting it ruin me. i had plenty of "good" weeks but i couldn't appreciate them because i was too busy worrying about whether i was a failure or not.
plus i didn't want to tell anybody how bad i was struggling because i was afraid to get everyone freaking out. all summer long i had heard nothing but "linda's been here longer than anyone else" "linda knows everything" etc etc. instead of giving me a big head, like this could very easily do, it terrified me. especially when people kept saying those things after i was having such a hard time, i didn't know how to ask anyone to pray for me. so that just added to all the other stress in my life.
i've said so many times that i wasted my summer. but i didn't realize just how much until today. now i'm that much more excited to go back. i know how to deal, and i know how to tell people when i can't deal. and mostly, because(yes, i do realize i'm a broken record) God wants me there. he made me for that place. that unexplainable, borderline-obsessive love i have for it couldn't come from anywhere but God himself.
in the end, i always choose camp. i may pitch a fit about it sometimes, or say crazy things like referring to future staff as "them" instead of "we", but God always knocks sense into my head somehow; sometimes he has to make me super sick and show me how wrong it feels to not be at camp, or sometimes hope has to yell at me, or sometimes one of my campers has to write me an amazing note. but somehow or another, i remember where my home is.

christmas and camp.

today i just got randomly excited about both these favorite things of mine.
both reasons why semester endings don't make me sad at all.
i miss camp. so much. i just want to be back right now. i miss my girls. i miss singing them to sleep at night. i miss loving on them every day and crying when they leave me. i miss worship. i miss chicken fingers. i miss jenna. i miss chi chi. i miss sam. i miss kathleen. i miss ashley. i miss chana. i miss hope. i miss getting notes. i miss hugs. i miss singing the lazy song, or banana pancakes, or cyclone ;]
i miss all the little things. (i never thought that they'd mean everything to me...no. i'm gonna be original this time.)
but it's okay. we'll be back in about 244 days, give or take a few. for now, i'm gonna try to focus on the school that i spent my summer missing.
i've decided i need to get better at being happy with where i am. i miss too many things. it's like wherever i am, i miss someplace else. once i get to the someplace else, i find something new to miss. but i don't like that. it kinda sucks.
i wonder how you do that? it probably requires a lot of being normal...which i'm not good at. ah well.
and there are 90 days until christmas. i guess that's too early to start shopping. but i WANT to. =]

no words.

i've never been good at writing about camp. it's just too big.
but i got much worse this summer.
i think camp is like a little sibling. it'll always be with me, whether i like it or not. when i grow up, it grows with me. when i say i hate it, i still love it. i'm just made to love it.
and i do. i never ever stopped. i hate that i didn't realize until summer ended that it's ok to sometimes not LIKE it. i spent too much time wondering if i still loved it and freaking out about how to like it again, and not half enough time just trusting that loving it and doing my job right.
it's like scott. i love him. (although in his case it's not so much the he's-my-brother-and-i'm-biologically-programmed-to kind, more the he's-my-best-friend-and-the-coolest-person-in-the-world kind) anyways. i love him all the time, but sometimes i don't like him. at all. and when that happens, i don't sit and freak out and think "holy crap what's wrong with me, do i not love him? but i WANT to love him, i am SUPPOSED to love him" blah blah blah. it's just part of life. of course i love him; i'm just sick of him. in time, i'll get un-sick of him.
so why do i not treat camp that way? why is it that when things get hard there, i lose my mind and wonder why i don't like it?

seasons coming and going.

so. my favorite season?
well...
i LOVE fall. it has my favorite colors and weather, and thanksgiving, and the beach trip, and crunchy leaves to step on or jump in, and pumpkin bread, and homemade soup, and north vs south.
i like winter, even though i hate how cold it is. but it has christmas. and christmas cookies, christmas trees, christmas movies, and christmas presents(to give; i never really care what i get). and more homemade soup. and boots and cute sweaters. and four weeks of no school. and more football. and the oscars. and slurpees.
i kinda like spring. the weather drives me nuts because it takes so long to get consistently warm, and there's pollen evvvvvvvverywhere(i'm not even allergic to it and i still complain about it). but there's spring break, and ridge haven, and easter, and the end of school, and it means that camp is coming! (that last one is really the only thing i LOVE. the others i love without capital letters)
and summer? i shouldn't have to tell you about that one. i mean, it starts with a couple weeks of no school, and then for the rest of the time i'm at CAMP, and when i'm not there i'm probably having fun adventures at some staffer's house, or going places with leighanne, or just getting to really sleep. plus, it's hot all the time, i'm tan and my highlights come back out, i have my birthday(which i hate but it's worth mentioning), and i have so much more uninterrupted, unrushed Jesus time than when i have school and everything else in the world to distract me.
so really, i actually just can't decide between summer and fall, if i really had to answer the question. basically all that up there just shows that i have no season i totally hate.
i'm thankful that God gives us just enough time with each season to get sick of it, so that we're happy when the next one comes, even if you hate cold weather as much as i do.

so weird.

for about two minutes, just now, i was mentally listing the things i need to do before 4:30 when i head back to camp.
then reality hit me like a train and reminded me that it's been six weeks. i'm not going back to camp until june.
i wonder if i'm going crazy, or if it's just that dr crutchfield's theory about not properly grieving, and how it does things to you, is right. he says you HAVE to cry, and you HAVE to talk about it, and you have to do that as soon as possible.
not that "grieving" is the right word, but i'm one of those people who really really needs closure, with anything. things need to sink in or they mess me up.
maybe i just swept it under the rug too soon this year. maybe i actually NEED to cry and mope for a weekend when i first get back. that's what i've always done before, and it's always got good and sunk in, and okay with me, that it was over.
why didn't they tell me that the day we left???

what *camp la vida* ought to do for you.

my friend who's a younglife leader tweeted a link to this blog post. it of course said "what being in younglife ministry ought to do for you", but i read it and every word also applies to camp(and actually any ministry).

i wish i had read this this summer.

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It ought to be so unreachably big that you can only see it

through the eyes of Christ by faith.

It ought to be harder than you can handle on your own

so as to make you more dependent on God.

It ought to give you enough disappointments

to make you humble and break your spiritual pride.

It ought to be difficult enough to make you weep

for others that you might become more compassionate.

It ought to have enough demanding,insensitive,

ungrateful people in it to teach you to love like Jesus loves.

It ought to have enough impossible,insurmountable

obstacles in it to teach you the goodness and power of God.

It ought to teach you how to love when you’re tired,

give when you’re spent and pray when you’re weary.

It ought to teach you how to turn your mourning into dancing,

your sadness into joy and your sorrow into laughter.

It ought to teach you the power and truth of God’s word,

the strength of His voice and the might of His commands.

It ought to teach you to love the only One worthy of all our love;

the One who became poor that we might become rich;

the One who became sin that we might become the righteousness of God.

A true ministry is the ministry that helps you become:

more like Jesus Christ

more in love with God

more in love with people.

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was that how your summer went?