Past and Present

RFKC training. I pick her up early on Saturday morning and feel the whisper as we pass someplace we have already been - a cycle completed.

Last time I was at this camp, she was one of my campers, a tiny little blonde child who still vividly remembers folding to the ground, arms and legs crossed tight, epically pissed off at me for some reason that both of us have forgotten. But, oh so definitely angry.

We stop to pick her up an energy drink, and, on the way to the church, she tells me that they asked her the same question in her interview that they ask everyone, "What would you do if a camper told you that they hated you?"

She said that she didn't know - then laughed as she told them that remembered probably using those exact same words on me.

And, I'm a little bit in awe of a God who ties things off long after we had thought them completed. Because, I never thought that, this many years later, we would be here.

I was eighteen when I was her counselor, just out of high school, ready to leave for college, not really planning to move back, to live here again. She was little, still years from graduating camp, reprimanding me every time that I praised her, jumping on the teen staff like they were climbing frames, and generally doing her best to prove that she was old hat at this - that she really didn't need me much at all.

But, we were well matched, both stubborn as mules, paired with a second child who was sweetly excited over everything. I remember settling onto the grass beside her and just waiting. I never would have guessed that that waiting could have been a  - very small - drop that poured into this.

There's a "Welcome Home Dinner" for the camp staff and families each year, and an open mic time for counselors to tell stories about amazing breakthroughs or cute conversations: like the time that one of my little Sunday school boys was stuck on the rock wall, petrified to move up or down, completely unresponsive to his counselors - until I called his name and he looked down at me... and climbed straight up to the top;

like his sister, who verbally forbade me from being away at college the next summer;

or... like my camper, who angrily sat in the games field refusing to go in to dinner, who probably told me that she hated me.

Except, not so much on the last one. I sat and listened to stories of amazing healing conversations that took place and wondered what families would think if I shared my story of a pissed off little towheaded child who went to my church.

Six years later, we will once again be in the same cabin. She's coming back as a CIT, one of two previous campers to be on this year's staff. She no longer hates me. She still has the pictures from that year. We laugh about the story often, and I was actually able to see her in action on a ministry trip last summer.

Six years later, it could be a welcome home story - all because of a God who, I am pretty sure, gets a kick out of reminding me just how carefully He ties the past together with the present, building seasons and cycles into our lives that we never could have imagined.