bite-sized pieces

I just got home from camp this morning after waking up at 3:30am eastern time to catch my 6am flight. I'm pretty wiped out and haven't had much energy for anything other than sleeping and picture organzing, which is quite a task since I have over 2000 pictures.
Even though I go to camp year after year capturing it in images and video clips is nearly impossible to do. I try to bring as much of it back with me so that in those long winter months when the sun feels like its never out and the chaos of camp feels far away, I can still relive the moments I've experienced with dear friends.

But no matter how hard I try, those videos don't capture the soul of camp; its like C.S. Lewis wrote about his experiences of joy: whenever you search for it, its always a step ahead, eluding you with hopes of it being just around the next bend. Camp is like that. If you try to conjure up emotions that you once had because you're afraid of loosing them, you end up missing out on the actual moments and experiences in front of you.

Because thats what camp is: a series of profound life-altering moments. Its also why camp is so exhausting because no matter what is going on around you, there's bound to be something profound happening in the most mundane of tasks. But if you actually try to discover it directly, you end up missing out on both the moment and the discovery. You have to allow each experience to seep into your heart and mind and soul and let it stew there for a few days to years before you begin to understand the significance of brushing someone's teeth, pouring them a glass of juice, cutting up pancakes into bite-sized pieces, tucking the blankets in around them at night. Even then I still find myself wondering at the privilege of being able to experience so much in such short bursts of time. How can I ever fully utilize the tremendous gift I've been given in working at Camp Harkness, how can I ever fully explain the lessons I've learned? Are there any other people who understand, and can I ever help anyone to understand who doesn't?
I want so badly to live with camp in my heart: its images and moments and memories a place where God has spoken so clearly and yet so indirectly that I spend the rest of my life discovering how each of these gifts has shaped me into who I am and who I become.

perseverance

I’m clinging to the promise, the reward of my last day, the sure foundation of my hope and the source of life within me. I am drawing closer each day to that great day when I will at last stand face to face with Jesus. May I live each moment in light of the glory of your face, each grace-filled hour as a fraction of the beauty I will see there, and each difficult, lonely day as the closest to hell I will ever be. Praise be to you Lord Jesus Christ for keeping me in your hand, for showing me more grace and mercy and justice and love than I could ever have imagined. May my life this week and always be a testament to your righteousness and your overwhelming compassion.

what does it really mean to see someone as an image-bearer of God? How can I fully comprehend the imago dei when understanding the Creator of that image is beyond words?

What does it mean to see myself as an image-bearer of God? How do I see myself for who I really am? The good and the bad?

Camp has made me ask this question even more. I wrote a reflection for group about the image of God, but what words and experiences have I had that really capture this idea? Working with people with disabilities has definitely changed how I think about imago dei, but I still feel so uneducated, unable to express or comprehend the beauty and majesty of God found in each human being.

What does this even mean? What does it mean that we each bear a unique aspect of God's image?

The end of an era

I've reached the end of my time at SPU and I think this picture sums it up. Family. Of all my experiences here, group staff has had the most lasting impression on my life and I hope that I will have the privilege of seeing these individuals continue to impact me throughout my life. Here's to the end of a wonderful story and the start of another!

I'm sitting here like I usually do at the close of another school year, trying to figure out what exactly each moment in this place has added up to. A good experience, a bad one, neither? What have I really learned? Who have I become? Where am I going? All these questions and more are flooding my brain, and yet I don't have the answers to most of them. I'm too close to this place to really understand what it all means, and honestly, some things will always be a mystery no matter how hard I try to peel back the layers.
Its hard to try and figure out how these three years at SPU have changed me, and yet in one sense I see so many lessons learned, friendships built, dreams realized and others taken away. I've had moments of extreme sorrow and moments when JOY filled my heart against all odds. And in the background beauty has always been there. The beauty of people, hurts, deaths, peace, patience, and hope. The beauty of Christ healing my heart of so much pain, and seeing him dwell richly in others.
Honestly, I have a lot of friends who don't understand why I love spu when I was rejected twice from their nursing program, but each of those rejections was a needed circumstance, a good I didn't want, but wouldn't trade for the world. I have been shaped and fashioned by two things at SPU: relationships and rejections. I wouldn't give any of those experiences away, no matter how painful they were. I would not be who I am today or going where I am now if not for those people who have come alongside me, and for the circumstances that were beyond my control.
So as I sit here reflecting on the past three years, I feel more than prepared to go, to find a new place of growth and to live in the grace, peace, and joy that Christ so graciously provides.

metaphors

I see the world through lyrics and metaphors,
Similes and analogies swirling
Like so many dust motes
In the sunlight of my mind.
Some- like rare gems
I collect in a secret corner
Counting my treasures like
A miser pores over his gold.
Others I see in vivid pictures
Wishing to rip them from
The screen of my mind.
Somehow this aspect of being
Is worth more to me
Than the things themselves,
This means that has become
My end,
In a twisting of the natural order.
A blessing
That I see the world
Through this lens,
This vision of a million
Different eyes upon a single scene.

each second

Somehow the oxygen still seep
Its way into your shriveled cells,
Each haggard breath a year of your life
In seconds.
Your eyes are glassy, unknowning pupils
Tossed amidst the blue of your irises.
Each heart beat pounds like a race horse
Down its final lap,
Erratic, frantic pulsing, one hundred and eighty beats
In each second.
And my hands shake as they brush
Ones, paper-thin and immobile at your side.
And each second
Is like a decade as Time and Death
Fight their age-old struggle
In you.
Why must civilians feel the heat of bombs,
The bone –crushing force of victory
That in seconds
Changes the landscape of your body,
Conforms it to the shape of the earth
Beneath you?
But the warriors have no answers and
My brain skips wildly,
Each neuron-message an overwhelming effort
And in each second
A century roles by and
The drips of the IVs and the blinking lights
Attempt their own conclusions.