Learning to be a Light

Hello! It has been a while and I feel bad about not updating more often, especially since the Lord is CONSTANTLY doing something in my life. 
I think I've mentioned before how one of the biggest blessings in working with The Bridge this summer is the fact that we open every morning with prayer. I LOVE this. I love praying with people! It is such a joyful privilege! 


This week is a girls camp called Summer Sizzle. Apart from having sailing for Sizzle in previous years, I really had no idea what to expect when I was told I would be a counselor for it this summer. I had even less of an idea of what to expect after I missed the orientation meeting the Sunday before and found myself kind of jumping in on Monday morning, not even knowing half of the other counselor's names. (I know at least half of them now... I think). 


I am someone who LOVES surprises (most of the time). I quite enjoy the thrill of not knowing where I am going on an adventure or what all I will be doing, that way I don't get disappointed too easily. If I anticipate things, I generally find myself a little deflated as I anticipate way too much and enjoy it way too little. As a general rule, I try to be easygoing enough to roll with the punches and scheduled enough to have some structure. 
So far, my Summer Sizzle experience had been one of the most joyful surprises God has had in store for me!! (This is a big deal because ALL of His surprises thus far have been incredible!) First off, not only do we start every morning with prayer, we also end every evening in prayer as well. We pray for each other and we pray for our campers. I love my campers!

Photo cred: The Bridge

It's still so funny to me how last summer, as a camp counselor,  I cried almost every single day with out fail. During staff training I cried multiple times a day and I kept asking God, "Why on earth am I here?" "Why would you push me this far out of my comfort zone?" "What good will come out of this summer?" Even in the weeks, maybe  even months, after I had packed up and returned home from camp I continued to ask God why I had been there and what good would ever come out of it. A year later I can see how that camp experience grew me in ways I never could have imagined. Growing up a tomboy with only one really close girl friend and 2 or 3 other girl friends who weren't as close and then a ton of guy friends, I wasn't especially talented in knowing how to love girls. I didn't know how to relate well enough to be someone who knew how to respond to a crying girl or a touchy-feely girl, or a dramatic, sassy, hyperactive girl. I didn't know how to do any of that last year, but I encountered all of that and it all made me cry because I felt like I was worthless and helpless. Of course that's when God steps in the most, right? 

I would, by no means, claim that I have any sort of talent in working with girls, still. But, God has grown in enough to know that all I need to do is follow the Spirit's leading as situations arise. 

Yesterday I had such a precious moment with two of my girls. We were out sailing on the lake (with not much wind) and having a wonderful time together capsizing, swimming, splashing and playing "see-how-well-you-can-stand-up-in-the-boat-without-getting-knocked-off-by-the-boom."

After about an hour of being silly and stuff, I began to ask them about what they thought of eternity and how to get to heaven and stuff. This girls are in 8th grade so I assumed somewhat that since they'd been going to church their whole lives they'd heard the gospel. They hadn't. They didn't know anything about Jesus coming to die for their sins or about asking Christ into their hearts. 
At one point I asked, "If there was a way you could be sure you were going to heaven when you die, would you want to know?" I expected to here a cheerful set of yeses but instead there was silence. The girls were thinking. Finally one of them answered and said, "It would be nice to know that, maybe, but I'm afraid that if I knew I was going to heaven than I would be a worse person than I am now because I would just think, 'oh I'm going to heaven anyways,' so I think it's probably better that I don't know."


Wow. The way the enemy works sometimes. I explained to them both how the Spirit changes our lives ones we receive Christ into our hearts and how we don't have to worry about how good we are or how bad we are because we have a helper to guide us in our walks with the Lord. They both wanted to think about that for a while. 


I started drafting this blog yesterday (Friday) before heading into my last day of Summer Sizzle. I didn't have time to finish it and didn't expect that I would have much to add to it after I would get home again. 


I think I walked into my door at about 12:07am...probably the longest day I've had this summer. But! By far it was the fullest and most incredible day as well. I wouldn't have traded any of those minutes or hours to be anywhere else. 

The day was full, it was hot, we worshiped together, we laughed together, we cried. Walls came down, God was with us, and there was joy. I cannot describe the day to you very well because my limited vocabulary is not able to capture the depth of the joy or the power in all that took place. Whether it was a girl who was too cool for school opening up about the brokenness that comes with divorce or looking over and seeing one my girls with an attitude sitting on the floor making conversation with the shyest girl in the group in an effort to make her feel welcomed and loved, I could see God among us. It was as if everything we did was one firework in the grand finale. And let me tell you, there were fireworks of God's handiwork alllll over the camp. It was a joy to watch. To look and see a girl from the Silver team felt loved, girls from the Purple team had become like a family, the girls on the red team were still cheering for all the other teams with spirit and selflessness, there were stories of walls coming down all over the place and girls laughing and feeling loved. 

After such a grand finale of a day, I feel like God had one last special fire work in store, just for me. We did an exercise where we wrote a sin we struggle with on a piece of paper and then through it in a fire and watched in burn up and disappear, and I got to put my arm around the girl I'd talked to in the boat and ask, "So, what did you decide?" and shortly after I found myself and her sitting off to the side on the grass as she prayed for Jesus to be a part of her life and help her to be the lady God made her to be. 

And with that, God lit another candle in this world. One more person entered from dark into light and has begun her most grand adventure with the Father. 

Of course I wasn't the only one who had the privilege of praying with girls who wanted to have a light in their lives. There were many last night. There was a great harvest of which all in which all of us got to play a part. I'm grateful to the people who prepared the soil and planted in the seeds. To those who watered and fertilized. To those who weeded and those who watched. It was all important.