Kinetic Withdrawals

          To be completely honest, right now I'm probably not in the best state of mind to write about deep things, and I have no idea how it will even be possible for me to summarize this past week in a way that makes sense, but I am determined to post this blog while my memories of camp are still fresh.
          Every year I go to camp with two big things on my mind: 1. Expectations of an amazing week, and 2. worry that my expectations will not be met. The night before I left for camp, I was basically having an anxiety attack. Camp has always been that one thing that I constantly look forward to. The highlight of my year. I literally count down the days. But this year was going to be a lot different, and I knew that. And it scared me. I was worried that I was going to compare this year to previous years and end up disappointed... and that's exactly what started to happen. I got to camp and instead of focusing on the amazing things that God was going to do and the amazing people I was meeting, I found myself selfishly comparing this year to previous years. And it was distracting me from the reason I was there: to encounter the God of the universe and grow closer to Him. But the cool thing is, that is exactly what camp was about: distractions, things that hold us back from going all out for Him. I started to reflect on all the things that distract me and hold me back, and I realized that one thing ties them all together: Self. I am sooo selfish. And it's selfishness that causes me to fear what people might think of me, or become lazy, or jealous, or a worry wart, or greedy, or have a "need" for attention... and so on and so forth. I've always known I'm selfish, but I've ever been hit so hard by that truth. Which leads me to another thing we talked about, (sorry, my mind is jumping all over the place) truth. We talked about the importance of not simply basing our faith off of the "truths" that people tell us, but asking difficult questions and seeking those answers for ourselves so that we can have a solid foundation to base our faith on.  I'm the type of person to base my faith off of my experiences with God or what I read from the Bible... and even though those things are awesome, I'm learning the importance of seeking out knowledge as well... and I've realized that honestly I know close to nothing about cultural context of the Bible, or why we believe the Bible is true, and so many other things... and what holds me back from learning all about them? pure laziness. My prayer is that I would have the desire and passion and drive it takes to really research why we believe what we believe.
          Speaking of truth, another thing we talked about was the lies that we believe about ourselves. Honestly, this is something that I've been struggling a LOT lately... and it was something I prayed that God would transform in me this week....and he did. He showed me that these things I've been struggling with ARE lies. And what blows me away is that almost everyone in my cabin was struggling with the same lies about themselves (not good enough, not smart enough, not bold enough, not loveable enough, not pretty enough, not talented enough, not worth enough....). It is so obvious that God placed our cabin together. We are all so ridiculously different, but we just click so perfectly... like a little family. We never held anything back from each other... and i mean anything. It seriously amazes me how real we were with each other all the time. We are all from different towns and churches, and even states, but we act like we've known each other forever. And we also knew how to have fun... we were basically attached at the hips the entire week... and it never got old or annoying (even though we were probably annoying to everyone else). It's pretty much amazing. I love them so much!

 Some other things that grabbed my attention:

1. Power of prayer. Why do we ever doubt it? (I might go into more detail with this at a later date)
2. So many times, our relationship with God is a one-way friendship... it's all about "Help me" or "Please...", or "Can I...?" or whatever.... it's all about Him being there for us, but we rarely take the time to really praise Him and seek His face to know Him better.
3. Our life is only a small teeny tiny itty bitty part of eternity... why not go all out???!

        Ok, I apologize about the length of this blog and my rants, and I'm sorry if none of it made any sense. But basically, the point of this story was that I had nothing to worry about. It turned out to be an amazing week where I got to spend time with an amazing God and meet some amazing people. My challenge now: facing the real world. It's hard. This week went by so incredibly fast yet it felt like I had been there forever. As a result, I'm having major Camp withdrawals. But soon I will have to start all over. Wednesday I leave for Kansas City to spend time with some awesome middle schoolers and other middle school leaders. My prayer is that I will have the energy to get the most out of it, and help them get the most out of it too.

          Any questions about what God did at camp? I would love to talk to you and go into more detail. And if you don't really care, that's totally cool too. :)


On a lighter note, what else did I do at camp?

• Bowled backwards in the longest bowling game in the history of...ever.
• Ate a peach with re-fried beans, brownie chunks, pepper, and a suddenly salad noodle on it.
• Tubed down a poop river in the middle of the night
• Licked the inside of a sweaty shoe and a well-used sweat band
• Bathed in mud and won a t-shirt because of it
• Sang in the shower with no regrets...even when the entire camp could probably hear
• Interpretive danced like there's no tomorrow
• Shared saliva with unknown amounts of people via launching ice cubes
• Became a ninja... until I was kidnapped by creeper van
• Ate a cheeze-it with my belly button
• Stuffed someone's dirty sock in my mouth for 10 seconds... right after the universe's most epic dance party.
• Convinced two people that my name was Floyd... and they believed it all week.
• Kicked someone in the face while doing a cartwheel 
• Spent literally hours at a time talking in the bathroom
• And oh so much more. 

Was I at any point embarrassed or grossed out by any of the above? not even a little. Should I have been? probably..... That, my friend, was freedom that I found in Christ... I didn't care in the least what anyone thought.... so either I was A.free. or B. just a freak.... Either way, I'm His, and that's all that matters.