camp la vida staff is a-strugglin over,
camp la vida staff struggles in their souls.
this was a long, hard week. it was 108 degrees, there were staff issues, camper issues, sickness issues, and we were very, very tired.
to really get down to why this week was hard, i need to tell one of my stories that seems off topic at first but really it's a perfect metaphor for the thing i'm actually wanting to talk about(if you've read my other blog you probably hate these. sorry) so bear with me because it might take a bit for you to get the connection.
some time on wednesday, i scraped my arm on something. it was super small and didn't hurt, so i didn't think it needed a bandaid.
later that day the little scrape itched. without thinking, i scratched that little itch, then stopped pretty quick because it hurt. the little scrape got a teeny bit bigger. i still didn't think it needed a bandaid.
as the next two days went on, little girls constantly grabbed my arm and put their nasty little hands on my little scrape. i didn't think about anything except the fact that it sort of hurt.
saturday my arm started to really really hurt. not just the little scrape...i mean all under the skin halfway up to my elbow was burning like nobody's business. i looked closer at it and found there was a huge puffy circle around the little scrape. hope and holli looked at it, practically died, and we realized my arm was very very infected.
i had no idea how that happened...i retraced my steps and realized, if i had only put a bandaid on it right away, then i wouldn't have itched it in the first place, and no little kid germs would have got in it, and it would probably be better by now.
so, as i sat in cara's kitchen soaking half my arm in peroxide, i debriefed the whole situation like i do all of life.
i realized that a lot of times at camp, i'll run into something like my little-scrape-turned-big-infection.
a little thing goes wrong.
i instantly see a solution to that little thing, but i don't see a real need for it, so i don't do it.
things keep irritating that little thing, and i ignore them. it isn't too late to do what needs to be done to fix it, but i don't want to do it. i tell myself the little thing will go away on its own.
but soon i realize the little thing is not only not going away, but it's spreading and hurting the rest of my work.
that happened this week. unlike past summers though, i've caught it pretty quick. and me and God have fixed it, and i'm gonna be just fine. basically, i need to rest. i need to read my Bible. i need to run. and i need to ask for help.
anyways.
this week was hard for a lot of people because it was a double minicamp week. that means we had one group of campers come monday morning and leave wednesday morning, then we got a few hours break until another group got here wednesday afternoon and left friday after lunch. then to make an already crazy week crazier, a couple hours after those girls left, we had a mother-daughter overnight group come until saturday at lunch time.
that is a ridiculous week.
the first half of the week was mother-daughter minicamp, which is always one of our favorites! while most of the moms that come for weekends are great, ALL the ones that come for minicamp are the super fun ones who are totally excited to be here. i had an amazing group in every way. the girls loved me, i loved talking to their moms(who all on wednesday said they couldn't wait to send their girls back by themselves next year and asked if i would be working again), and i had a former staffer mom, which are my favorite kind ever. side note, did yall know that 2002 was ten years ago? that's crazy.
the second half was a little more difficult. remember how i've had 4th and 5th graders the first two weeks? well for minicamps we get a lot of younger girls, so i had eight 2nd graders and three 3rd graders. don't get me wrong, i love the little ones but i learned this week that i have no patience with them. i love them from a distance, but having a cabin full of them just takes too much out of me. it's not that i didn't love them; they were precious and made me laugh a lot, i just would rather play with them all day than deal with their questions and HS and constant need to hang all over me all day. none of them are gonna go home saying i was frustrated with them all week because i'm sure they had no idea. but that makes me sad because they think i was a good cabin leader, when really i was pretty mediocre. i did the total bare minimum for them that i needed to, and these girls deserve so much more than a cabin leader who gets them where they need to be and doesn't yell at them.
after such a hard week i was so ready for another group of moms to come, and thankfully i ended up with the best group ever! this was the first time that i knew the moms better than their girls(though the girls were wonderful too). and my favorite mom ever was there with her youngest(in another cabin, sad day), she's come eight summers in a row with all of her daughters but this is finally her last year that she can come. her oldest who was in my cabin with her in '09 is going into 8th grade now. crazy crazy.
i love that i'm finally at the point where mother-daughters are fun and relaxing, not stressful and awkward like when i was little. i feel so much older this year.
so, stories:
1. the funny one. for the second minicamp, me and tori had a little girl whose name was tori(we called her little tori). just like staffer tori("big tori" from this point on), camper's tori's name wasn't short for anything, it was just tori. just like big tori, little tori is CRAZY country. little tori was the sweetest and sassiest child you will ever meet.
little tori changed her mind more often than my sister changes what country she lives in.
"i HATE camp la vida!"
"why do you hate camp la vida?"
"you wake us up in the morning!!!!!!!"
a couple hours later...
"i don't WANT to go home."
"why not?"
"my brother is SO annoying!"
the next day...
"i can't WAIT to get out of here!"
"why?"
"you TORTURE children!"
"how do i torture you?"
"it ain't even 10 am and you're makin us get out the bed!"
2. the slightly serious but still kind of funny one.
on thursday for decision night, one of my girls wrote on her card "i want to be a savior." i thought this might mean she wanted Jesus to be her savior...but when i took her aside to talk to her and asked her to tell me about what she wrote, she said "i want to be a savior!" i asked her what she thought that meant. she says "well, i want to save people. like make them better when they're sick or have problems. see, i'm gonna be a doctor when i grow up."
now we have a week off. you can still be praying, for lots and lots of rest. for all of us. i'm not the only one who's had a hard week. we all need physical rest, but more than anything pray that we can all soak up some real deep Jesus time this week. my heart needs rest more than my body and my brain right now. i need to get refocused.
No comments:
Post a Comment