Middle school camp is a whirlwind.
Middle school camp is always a whirlwind. A place where Holy looks like thirty minutes spent dragging kids into the shallow part of the river and dunking each other over and over again into the water that we have stirred up to brown with the constant scrambling of our feet. Looks like tiny sixth graders who bury each other in sand and kids who sass back at leaders who are teasing them.
Holy looks like chapel services with sixth grade girls stretched out long on one side, seventh and eighth grade boys on the other, and sixth grade boys lined up behind, all of them watching each other, learning, protecting. Becoming this crazy family that passes around my phone simply to have it and keeps hawk eyed track of who is injured or stressed out or tired.
We play endless hours of volleyball and gaga, climb up and down the hill and down and up again. Carry gunny sacks up to the top of the slide. Lounge in hammocks and make videos and weave our confessions into artwork down by the stream.
We get lost and frustrated and find our way again, learn that sometimes you have to turn around to where you came from to get back on course, and sometimes you simply have to follow someone who has walked the path before you.
We have worship stations that are art and nature walks, service and music, and, when night falls, we leave our schedule to the mercy of the growing darkness. Run through unseen blackberry bushes, search for counselors who disappear into the blackness, and sit under the stars to sing and talk with these kids who curl like puppies to keep each other warm, their shivering, tired frames struck by the Holy of this mountainside.
On the final night, we gather on the floor of the chapel, and our kids practice the kind of transparent honesty that comes so naturally to middle schoolers on the last full day of camp.
My girls make it back to the cabin mostly delirious with exhaustion and still wet with tears over stories that they hadn't expected to hear. They talk and then we pray, a steady stream of eleven year old voices that stretches until the calm ones are falling asleep where they sit, and we send the rest of them to bed, still holding hands and sniffling, because, sometimes, what they really need is rest.
They've spent the week making signs to decorate the wall outside our cabin and breakout times rifling through their Bibles to show each other favorite verses. We're all in one lodge again this year, and they've taken advantage of the hotel style hallways in the best ways possible, using them to check in with each other, to return belongings, to make plans for the day. To be family.
Because, our kids are in love with the water front, when no one else is there, and they plan their afternoons carefully to avoid the crowds of the larger camp that meets below us. We line the dock to watch people play on the log, life jacket clad bodies trying to push each other off of the spinning, padded cylinder, and the flat surface tips with the weight of us.
It's a little cold for the water most days, but no one seems to mind, not when the sun is brilliant on the last day and we can speak the easy language of pushing each other off and dunking each other under, of sand fights and mud fights and M&Ms given out for the completion of puzzles. Of forgetting rolled ankles for long enough to take advantage of these moments and of settling into now familiar spots to hear truth fall from each other's lips.
Because, at middle school camp, everything is Holy.
Middle school camp is always a whirlwind. A place where Holy looks like thirty minutes spent dragging kids into the shallow part of the river and dunking each other over and over again into the water that we have stirred up to brown with the constant scrambling of our feet. Looks like tiny sixth graders who bury each other in sand and kids who sass back at leaders who are teasing them.
Holy looks like chapel services with sixth grade girls stretched out long on one side, seventh and eighth grade boys on the other, and sixth grade boys lined up behind, all of them watching each other, learning, protecting. Becoming this crazy family that passes around my phone simply to have it and keeps hawk eyed track of who is injured or stressed out or tired.
We play endless hours of volleyball and gaga, climb up and down the hill and down and up again. Carry gunny sacks up to the top of the slide. Lounge in hammocks and make videos and weave our confessions into artwork down by the stream.
We get lost and frustrated and find our way again, learn that sometimes you have to turn around to where you came from to get back on course, and sometimes you simply have to follow someone who has walked the path before you.
We have worship stations that are art and nature walks, service and music, and, when night falls, we leave our schedule to the mercy of the growing darkness. Run through unseen blackberry bushes, search for counselors who disappear into the blackness, and sit under the stars to sing and talk with these kids who curl like puppies to keep each other warm, their shivering, tired frames struck by the Holy of this mountainside.
On the final night, we gather on the floor of the chapel, and our kids practice the kind of transparent honesty that comes so naturally to middle schoolers on the last full day of camp.
My girls make it back to the cabin mostly delirious with exhaustion and still wet with tears over stories that they hadn't expected to hear. They talk and then we pray, a steady stream of eleven year old voices that stretches until the calm ones are falling asleep where they sit, and we send the rest of them to bed, still holding hands and sniffling, because, sometimes, what they really need is rest.
They've spent the week making signs to decorate the wall outside our cabin and breakout times rifling through their Bibles to show each other favorite verses. We're all in one lodge again this year, and they've taken advantage of the hotel style hallways in the best ways possible, using them to check in with each other, to return belongings, to make plans for the day. To be family.
Because, our kids are in love with the water front, when no one else is there, and they plan their afternoons carefully to avoid the crowds of the larger camp that meets below us. We line the dock to watch people play on the log, life jacket clad bodies trying to push each other off of the spinning, padded cylinder, and the flat surface tips with the weight of us.
It's a little cold for the water most days, but no one seems to mind, not when the sun is brilliant on the last day and we can speak the easy language of pushing each other off and dunking each other under, of sand fights and mud fights and M&Ms given out for the completion of puzzles. Of forgetting rolled ankles for long enough to take advantage of these moments and of settling into now familiar spots to hear truth fall from each other's lips.
Because, at middle school camp, everything is Holy.
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