week 8: end-of-summer surprises.

i never knew i was capable of loving any campers this ridiculously much. then i got a cabin full of acteens.
and up until monday at about 10:22, i didn't think i'd be saying anything like that at the end of the week.
i'm at the opposite of a "loss for words" right now. i have so many words, so many big feelings, WAY too many incredible stories. i have no idea what to write or how to.
so i'm gonna tell a story first.
last friday afternoon, while i was waiting for my girls to leave, cindy came and asked me if i would be okay with having my cabin closed and working with the older girls this week.
what i thought i was signing up for? being a staffer in a cabin of sixth graders.
i got all excited and said of course i would. i figured it'd be the perfect last week: low maintenance campers that i'm not ultimately in charge of, tons of time to clean my other cabin, pack, hang out with other cabins when my cabin leader didn't need me, roll out of bed at 7:15 and walk to flags...etc etc.
well. a little later i was in the admin talking about how awesome this was, and bobbie tells me what i was actually signing up for: still being a cabin leader, just in cabin 2 instead of 8, for 7th-9th graders.
i freaked out worse than i did the day of my first mother-daughter camp. i came up with every excuse in the book to get out of it.
"i'm not cool enough for 14 year olds to listen to me!"
"i still look like i'm one of these girls!"
"i've never read the hunger games!"
"i don't know all the secrets of life yet!"
after spilling these out in rapid succession, bobbie looks at me and says "so you don't want to be cabin leader?" and my orange self(i'll explain that in a later post) heard a challenge somewhere in there, and said "well i'll DO it, but i won't be GOOD at it and these girls are NOT gonna want someone like me leading them..." and so on.
sunday night, i was still worried but in a more calm and serious way. i honestly thought there was no way i could be the kind of leader that girls that age need. little girls need you to braid their hair, hold their hands, and listen to endless stories about their pets; but once they hit middle school, they need you in a whole different way.
i told God all of this while i was trying to sleep that night. and he started bringing to my mind all the reasons why i loved my staffers when i was that age(another post about all of that is coming later too). i got out of bed and wrote down a whole list. i looked at it, and i still felt like i couldn't do it...but i also had that weird peace, where you're scared to death but at the same time you totally know God has a surprise coming.
and bless it, he had a big one.
not only was it THE perfect last week, it was one of the most incredible weeks of my whole "career" at camp.

important side note: the last week is already a special one every year. not only do all the staff suddenly embrace camp all over again because it's the LAST week, but there are some very special campers called Last Week Campers. these girls come the last week every year, and most of them have been doing this for years and years. half of them have been in each other's cabins before or at least know each other from past years. and all of them just love camp so much.

a while ago, i wrote about the relationship-y side and the leadership-y side of camp, and how i'm way over on the relationship-y side(explained here if you want, but it's really long). i thought that would be a bad thing for working with older campers; how are they supposed to take me seriously if all i want to do is be their friend?
but that's the whole point. you have to be their friend if you want them to take you seriously. it is ALL about relationship for them.
basically, i was made for acteens. who knew?
me and God and my girls all together made our week the most insane amount of fun. they had awesome attitudes about everything(from cleaning up after meals to listening in Bible study to picking up other cabins' trash to wearing dumb hats to breakfast). they were best friends within an hour. they were always ready to have fun, but just as ready to be serious and listen when it was time.
we loved each other like crazy. we laughed, we cried, we learned the story of stephen in a whole new way, we lost cabin capers every day because talking was more fun than cleaning...i could tell stories for a month. please ask me about it next time you see me.
i didn't feel like a cabin leader this week. i felt like we were all sisters, and i was just the big sister that the younger ones loved and looked up to. (and i felt really old on thursday night when someone reminded me that i'm eight or nine years older than most of them! wasn't it just yesterday that i wasn't allowed to tell any acteen campers my age because i was so young?)
when everyone told me how great it was to work with older ones, they never mentioned how much harder it is to say goodbye. each one took a little piece of my heart this week, and forgot to give it back on friday...so twelve pieces of my heart are now spread around south carolina.
but they're all coming back the last week next year. =] (and that's not just me saying it, like when i say "oh yes you ARE coming back" or something. when we were hugging and crying after lunch, they were all telling each other "it's okay, same time next year right?" and after agreeing, 24 eyes turn and burn holes in me, and one of them says "and linda. you HAVE to come back. or we'll be like, depressed, literally, the whole week.")

i'm gonna do a whole post about what i learned this week later. so i'll just skip to my amazing camper story of the week. even though there were SO many...

little A, who was super shy the first day, thought it was going to be a totally boring week, and told me that night not to hug her because "i don't mean to be rude, but it's just, it's like you're my mom, and that creeps me out." then she kept opening up more and more as the week went on, until thursday at bedtime she pulled me aside and said, "well, i kinda have a problem. see, i don't wanna leave? and like...this has been the most fun night of my life...and i love everybody here so much...and you know how you cried earlier? well i might do that tomorrow. is that okay?" then she added "can you be my mom? i mean not my real mom, but you're like my mom and i really love you."

B, who's been "my" camper for so many years, knew everything about camp and took all the first time campers under her wing. and she put on her camper survey that her favorite part of camp was meals, not just because the food is delicious, but mostly because of our fun conversations.(and i agree with her)

and C, who made it so hard to eat because she had us laughing too hard every day, who taught us that a worse singer than justin bieber DOES exist, and who knocked morgan and bean off the throne of "best dumb as a stick performers ever."

and don't even get me started on all of cabin 1. our cabin set was so awesome! all of our girls just floated together. they all made friends with each other and i was just as sad to see kathleen's girls leave as i was for my own.

then my adventure rec group was amazing, as 99% of acteen groups are. even though they had all done it before, so they knew all the "answers" for debriefing. but they just had so much fun together. until this week i'd never had a whole group change their minds and beg to finish the ropes course instead of climbing the rock wall. they loved each other. they wanted to do everything and never complained, even when it rained two days in a row and we had to play games in the unit 4 building so many hours(and i've never had that much fun playing them! i could have spent all 4 days that way and been fine).

i love my job so much. and as usual, after the best week of it, it's done for another year.
but that's another story for another post. which will be coming in the next hour or so. =]