Camp, week one: Juniors

Blog thur 6/23/11

I wrote this during my break

~~~

Multiple times this first week of actual camp (the couple weeks was just staff training—no kids), I’ve asked myself, why do I do this again?

And then I see God in the kids, see the beautiful looks on their faces, and try to answer the surprisingly deep questions they ask, and hear them cheer, “You go, Maryann!” and see them reading their Bibles in their free time out of pure curiosity and I remember what it was like to be eight years old and it’s then that I remember why I do this.

I am constantly growing and stretching as a person at camp. As a camper my thirst was being quenched; as a counselor I’m the cup, the means for the campers to receive the water they crave. It’s hard.

Last night was “outpost” night, which, for the late elementary kids (my age group this week) means cooking our pan pizzas over a fire, roasting marshmallows, taking a night hike, and sleeping in a tree house. All was well and good the whole evening except for the looming threat of storms. After we’d had our dinner, we went back into main camp and played some game called quidditch, which I was informed was from Harry Potter or something. I was the strongest force on a team full of 8-11 year olds, and we were winning for most of the game, but lost at the last second because of a weird rule our referee made about a golden ball or something. Also we had pool noodle “broomsticks” we had to keep between our legs at all times. Am I inadvertently making references to Harry Potter?

During our night hike we ate a magical food called wintergreen mints. They are magical because they are iridescent, in other words, they light up when they are crushed. It’s a natural source of light, the same way some animals are bioluminescent (for example, lightning bugs, glow worms, and angler fish). So when we ate the mints in the dark, we chewed with our mouths open so that other people could see what looked like tiny white fireworks in our mouths. It’s really cool. One little girl was cracking up as she watched me chomp on mine. I, for one, think it’s fascinating that anything, let alone candy, can produce its own light.

Once we got up to the tree house, and were about ready to go to bed, all the kids were freaking out because they thought they heard raccoons down below (they were probably right.) I, too, was scared, because the winds were picking up and the tops of the trees, including the one our tree house wraps around, were swaying. A lot.

I decided to calm my kids down and get them to go to sleep by singing to them, so I sayd “Hey guys?” like I was going to say something then when I got their attention I began to sing “Amazing Grace” to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun”. I started panicking because I couldn’t remember the second half of the third verse so as I was singing the first and second verse, I was praying that God would somehow put the words in my head so I could sing it and make my way to the fourth, my favorite, verse. Trusting him, I started in on the third verse, “Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come…” and then, at the very, very last second (of course), the Lord provided. “’Twas grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”

I finished off with my favorite verse, then sang the first verse again to the traditional tune of “Amazing Grace.”

After that they were quiet.

I lied in bed watching the trees moving, and started seeing lightning. After 20 or so minutes of that, it started getting more frequent and I started hearing thunder. I began to worry. It was still distant, so I texted my good friend and asked him to look up the weather. The kids aren’t allowed to see me with my phone so I tried to keep it hidden in my sleeping bag. He said different websites said different things for our area, but most of them suggested a good chance of storms. I finally decided to relocate the children. I was scared, but I was as calm and gentle as I could be with waking them up and telling them we needed to get down and move to the nearby shelter. After moving all those pillows and sleeping bags down the ladder, spreading out the tarp, spotting kids as they climbed down, and finally an exhausted attempt at single-handedly shutting the hatch to the tree house (it’s way harder than it looks), (oh, and after profusely thanking my friend that had been texting me), I crashed in my sleeping bag under the shelter, covered in sweat and with a relieving sense of peace and calm.

~~~

This is where I stopped typing when I wrote this the other day. My break ended so I had to quit, but I think I found a good stopping place, don't you? :)

The rest of my week went well and I actually sort of miss my kids, they were great, asked so many good, deep questions about God, and thought I was the best counselor on the face of the earth, which is something I didn't experience last year, and it was awesome :D

I'm going on outreach next week, which is where I travel to a church somewhere in Ohio, stay at a host home, and do camp as a day camp. It should be super fun... hope all my faithful readers are having as fantastic of a summer as I am!

The next two months...

Readers,
This post is just for logistics, so if you're not a regular reader, please disregard and read something more exciting that I've written.

I am going to be working as a counselor at a church camp this summer which means limited computer access which means infrequent blog posts. I will be done with camp on August 6th, so after that, I'll bump it back up. I will probably post a few times while I'm away, but I'm not going to make any promises. I will post once a week at most.

On the bright side, I am really, really, really looking forward to camp and God is definitely going to be moving in my life and many others. I'm also kind of nervous, but that feeling probably won't last. Camp is a magical place where I've spent my entire life. It's where my parents met when they were workers there like me. It's a paid job, but none of us are in it for the money. If we were, well, we'd be working somewhere else :) I get to hang out with kids all day and teach them about Jesus. Not only that, but I get to spend the majority of my time in God's beautiful great outdoors! Yep, it'll be pretty fantastic. It's a little bit of Heaven on Earth.

God bless!

Until next time,
Maryann

How to Get a Boyfriend/Girlfriend (Really) Pt. 2

A glimpse from my (very) personal life... 
P.S. I promise the content of my message is related to the title of this post. I'm not promising you'll see the connection, but it's there. Just read it.

From: Maryann <bennettmk@earthlink.net>

Date: June 5, 2011 12:41:13 PM

To: ------------ <---------@--------->

Subject: Re: Hey! :)

Hey ---------,

God really spoke to me at church this morning and I have been doing a lot of thinking. I think you were definitely right to say I was obsessing over ----, you're absolutely right, I was really good about it for awhile while I was at school, but I think being home and being near him kind of brought it all back, all that heartache and everything. It's kind of strange, because I know I was kind of obsessed with him, or the relationship at least, while I was dating him, and I had thought I had learned my lesson, little did I know that I could just as easily obsess over someone I'm NOT with... thank you very much for opening my eyes to that. 

So yeah with the songs and the sermon and prayers and everything this morning, I guess God really opened my eyes to a lot this morning, I am a really terrible sinful person, but Jesus loves and wants me anyway...

I just thought of the funniest little analogy, haha, Jesus is like a little boy, and we are all like toys at an antique shop or something, we're all these old used, broken toys, but little boy Jesus wants us anyway, he wants to take us home and fix us and make us new again. Most little boys only want new toys that work perfectly but Jesus wants the broken ones, and the truth is, all of us are broken...

So, I don't know, I guess it's hard to really come to any solid conclusions of what I'm going to do next, you know, I think I really need to just embrace being single and use it as an opportunity to really love and serve Jesus better, you know? Being in a romantic relationship is SO distracting, especially for me, I am so terrible about it, maybe it all stems from my early start with getting boyfriends and things, I have been boy-crazy my whole life and it broke me, I'm that broken toy who can't keep her focus on Jesus because she's constantly worried about some guy, and if I never heal from that, well, it would probably be better if I remained single forever. Hopefully I will heal eventually though, and keep a balance and harmony between a man and Jesus, because romance is a very spiritual thing, and frankly, a relationship with Jesus is very much a romance, but I need to just accept that that healing is probably years and years away. I think what God wants me to do is just consider myself single until further notice, until he brings a man into my life and makes it clear that he's the one or that he wants us to date... that might be years away so I should probably just forget about ----, but also not be "looking" for anyone, you know? Frankly, I am not emotionally stable enough to handle a relationship with anyone right now, wow that is hard to admit but it's true. 

So basically I guess I just wanted to say, thanks for your honesty, that's a real friend that'll do that. As for that song you sent me, Chances, well I don't believe in coincidences, and sometimes chances mean the same thing, I guess rather than saying, well, we never know, it's better and more accurate to say, well, we don't know, but God does so we should trust in him. God knows what he's doing in my life and even though my future seems more ambiguous than it's ever been, I know that it'll get here eventually some way or another and that if I just focus on loving Jesus, I won't really have anything to worry about. Thanks for helping me see that

I love you a lot, have a wonderful day

God bless

-Maryann

Unlikely Friends

I'm amazed that two people so different can be so close. Opposites don't always attract, usually people that are similar stick together, but every now and then you find someone who is... Well, let me put it this way. I first heard this analogy at TEC (teens encounter Christ). When you hold someone's hand, their fingers go in between yours, they fill the gaps.

That's because their strengths fill in where you have weaknesses, or are lacking strength, and vice versa. You're opposites, but you complete each other. And when you find a person who "holds your hand" like that per say, it's a beautiful thing.

It always amazes people when an animal forms a bond with another animal of a totally different species. It's really no big deal when a dog is friends with a dog or you go to the zoo and see two monkeys hanging out, but every now and then you hear about those very special friendships between a monkey and a cat, or a dog and a giraffe, or a horse and a duck. It's always those beautiful connections that catch people's attention. They're not expecting it, and it's inspiring. It makes people think, Gee, if animals can get past their differences and just be friends, then why can't humans?

Truth is, a lot of humans do. We're relational beings and sometimes we do indeed venture outside our own kind. We discard all concepts of religion, race, economic standing, backgrounds, age, gender, intelligence, lifestyles, everything, and look on the inside, and form bonds based on, well, who even knows? Who cares? Maybe it's just mutual love and respect for one another that brings two people together in friendship. Maybe our souls see something our eyes can't. It's beautiful.

My friend, Kayleigh, is, in some ways, the most normal teenage girl you've ever seen, and in other ways, the most remarkable. She looks normal, acts normal, does normal things. But her best friend is someone who is, on the outside, very different. Her best friend has a terminal disease, uses a wheelchair and can no longer even speak normally, but is all right in the head and otherwise quite normal. Kayleigh looked through her classmate's atypical outward appearance and saw her normal interior. The two friends hang out all the time and do all kinds of normal teenage girl things together. Kayleigh even gave a speech at their graduation about her best friend and how she's really not so different after all. If you ask me, Kayleigh's the more different one. She's got a heart of gold that is just incomparable to anyone else.

The song "Failure to Excommunicate" by Relient K has always inspired me with this one line:
Jesus loved the outcasts. He loves the ones the world just loves to hate.

When you run into someone that you feel "above" or something, like they're too weird and you don't want to associate with them, and you ignore them or are mean to them, even, you're choosing to conform to the world. But when you take the time to get to know them, despite their social status, that's like Jesus. He humbled himself by making friends with outcasts, people that society shunned and no one else wanted to be friends with. As it says in Proverbs 25, "Do not exalt yourself in the king's presence, and do not claim a place among great men; it is better for him to say to you, 'Come up here,' than for him to humiliate you before a nobleman." Since culture has changed a lot since the time that was written, this passage serves mostly as a metaphor, but it's a powerful one. In the context I'm trying to relate it to, it means don't be bashful about your friends. Don't let social barriers stand in the way. If being friends with someone who's "weird" or an outcast means humbling yourself, so be it.

However, obviously making friends with people who are different then you doesn't necessarily mean all your friends should be weirdos. You can be friends with popular people too! In fact, I'm not even saying you can't be friends with people similar to you. I'm simply saying that you shouldn't let what you see on the outside hide what you could see on the inside. Be open to possibilities. Friendship can spring up in the most unexpected places.

In writing this, many people came to my mind that are unlikely friendships. I'm friends with people that no one, myself included, ever expected me to be friends with. Contrarily, I've found that people who seem very similar to me on the outside, are really very different on the inside (and we stayed friends anyway).

Friendship is a beautiful thing and is also a pretty universal thing. It's a thing to explore and experiment (gently) with. It's an opportunity to love everyone. So make friends with your neighbor's dog, your grandpa, a homeless man, a little girl, an anonymous identity, your boss, the shy kid in the back of the class. Friendship knows no bounds. Go for it :)

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to survival."
- C. S. Lewis

"I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends."
-Abraham Lincoln

"Two are better than one
because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down,
one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
and has no one to help them up."
- Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

God bless

Ice Cream in Heaven

I wrote this short poem as a tribute to ice cream, my newest obsession. I've been eating ice cream almost every day lately and I LOVE IT. This started out as a simple ode to the sweet treat, but ended up as a much more serious life-and-death situation ;)


Unbearable heat
Sweating and panting
Oppressive, smothering
Bright exhaustive scorching sun
Eyelids close
Soft death

--And then--

In your hands, joy,
Sweet, sugary, cold joy
Lick the heavenly cream
Pure, untouched goodness
Catch the cool drips
Then the sweet crunch
Sticky smiles
Soft relief