Camp is...

All week long, I find my brain running with the impossible task of trying to define this place. Royal Family is...what?

RFKC is...a tiny seven year old in a pink, fuzzy pegasus/unicorn costume clopping across a baseball field in wildly oversized cowgirl boots, craning her head up to talk to one of several costumed teenaged boys, while dusty elementary schoolers run the bases and a just bigger boy in a penguin costume stands to play catcher.

It is canoe rides that have no other purpose than to pick a leaf off a lamb's ear plant on the tiny island just off shore,

...a CIT having a magical battle with a clump of three armor clad little boys, waving her wand to turn them into anything that their imaginations can come up with as they roll and run over this grassy field shaded by towering pines,

...bug bites and cough drops and long lines at the nurses' cabin,

...birthday parties and bounce houses and chariot rides and children who are so equally tired and covered with dirt that we decide to put them to bed smudged and sweaty and deal with showers after the next day's Polar Bear Swim, because children who have just jumped into an unheated pool at 6:45 in the morning think that hot water is their new best friend.

RFKC smells like...sweat and bug spray and glue sticks,

...sunscreen and urine and endless glasses of milk poured before the counselors sit down to begin a single meal,

...like cake and nail polish and curing irons used on little girls who have just finished washing their faces on the front porch of the cabin,

...like that gloriously sweet and musty smell of dirty socks and air freshener and fresh air that can only come together at camp. Because, yes, summer camp has a smell.

Camp is...tinies who fall asleep on the nearest grown-up during chapel and wander through these trees absently picking up sticks and setting them down again and singing to themselves with the words of these newly familiar songs.

"I am not forgotten..." the boys bounce against the edge of the inflatable, waiting their turn, "...Lord, Jesus, won't you come and fill me up, 'cause, without you, I'd be feeling so empty..."

Lined up for fancy dinner, during a lull in chapel, walking down to the pool, or waiting for coach's games, they sing, "...You never let go, through the calm and through the storm..."

RFKC is...endless letters and constant finagling over when they can next check the mail boxes,

...counselors and staff fitting letter writing into every spare moment that they can squeeze out of the day, because, in this land of no phones and no cameras and no instagram, if the kids don't get a letter about it, it may not have actually happened,

...and seven-year-olds ecstatic to learn that even though it is only everybody's "pretend" birthday, the cupcakes and ice cream are going to be very, very real.

It is...meltdowns and giggles and slow trust that comes quicker than we have any right to ask or expect.

This year in particular, it is sunshine and unity and kids and adults alike who light up as if they have just been given the greatest present in the world.

It is...CITs who hold out their arms with patient grace to absorb the boy cooties that one of my little girls has managed to pick up from here or there or everywhere and who let her tug us together on her steady mission to discover who exactly at camp is taller than who,

...teenagers and adult staff who quietly get up to place a towel over mysterious dripping substances in the middle of the night and then go back to sleep, ready to wake up and smile all over again the next morning.

It is...high schoolers who take on the role of high intensity parents for the week and relax in the moment after the bus pulls away, grateful to once again "be the kids" in the equation,

...and who spend the next hours and weeks talking about "their kids" every moment that the opportunity begins to present itself.

Camp is family determined to let every member know that they are seen and appreciated and loved, a week long group of tight knit purpose that manages to spill out the seams to infect an entire church, the sort of thing that fills up conversation after conversation and somehow still leaves the entire thing still sitting there to be talked about all over again.

Camp is name tags and magic and hurt and healing, not-nearly-enough-sleep and already-ready-to-go-do-it-again.

Camp is beautiful and camp is messy.

Camp is life so smashed up together that it might just be a tiny glimpse of heaven.

(Because, sometimes I doubt that Forever is going to be a peaceful sort of quiet place, and I think that it is going to be a whole lot more rough and tumble rubbing together of lives, with all of eternity to work out the differences. Forever might turn out to be just a little bit like a less exhausting version of camp, which Jesus right there to fill us up 'till we overflow.

Because, the leaves of those trees will be for the healing of the nations.)