Quick Update (written on Monday the 8th)

The days have slipping into weeks, and the weeks into months.  Mondays (our staff day off) haven’t really given me a chance to update my blog or even open my laptop very often. Week 3 was the roughest week for me so far. My campers were great, and I had the schedule down, but my mentality was off. Way off. I was miserable; I had been in the same cabin for 3 weeks and had had the same schedule. I knew that I would be there again for week 4 and I felt slightly trapped. At one point, I was ready to go home on the next bus and be done. During my TAWG on Monday night I was looking through on of the papers we were given and one of the sections (taken from Tom Harmon’s book on prayer) struck home for me. It said “the refusal to die to myself is what makes me so miserable.” At camp it is a hard concept to realize that you are refusing to die to yourself because simply living here for the whole summer seems like a huge sacrifice in and of itself. It is so easy to look at all that I’ve given up this summer and think that I deserve a break, or that I am so selfless and sacrificing. But I needed that awakening. After that phrase, it listed 20 or 30 some things under the heading of “I yield my rights to…” It was very humbling to read through the list and realize that I haven’t been yielding my rights in hardly any of them. In fact, I highlighted the ones I felt especially convicted on and when I looked back, basically the whole list was highlighted. No wonder I had been miserable. I was refusing to die to myself; and refusing to see that God has been placing me exactly where He has planned on putting me since the beginning of time! Instead, I was having pity parties for myself and believing lies. I was looking at all that I had given up instead of all that I was still holding tightly to. I so enjoyed last week living in the state of seeing those things. I know that in many ways my fist is still closed tightly around what I want a lot of the time. But I know God is faithful and I am so excited to see Him at work in the lives of my campers and me! I have had 27 incredibly amazing campers so far and I have truly enjoyed this journey!