wwW - Week 2 Camp Zoom

Week 2 has been a little harder. Everyone is a little more fatigued. The needs have been more challenging, the misbehavior more obvious, more pervasive, and for me anyways, the muscles sorer than they were the week before.

Let's face it, there are some days where it is simply harder to find the positive than others.

And a little voice inside says that on those days it may be even more important to look for it.

The truth is that underneath the fatigue and the misbehavior of little ones that can push towards annoyance and frustration - is the fact that there is no place that I would rather work. I love camp. I have since I was a camper not much older than the kids in Zoom, and I've never grown out of it. I chose the college I went to a million years ago because it had a degree in camping. It has taken me time to get here, but that makes it something I want to savor even more.

I am slowly getting use to little bodies and am finding myself falling into a fascination with pre-schoolers instead of getting freaked out when some random little body plops itself on mine. My own dislike of being touched is slowly starting to get anesthetized. In fact I think I am starting to learn some pretty deep things from them that have been triggered by unexpected hugs and random encounters during quiet time.

Things like what trust really looks like. One little one had no clue who I was. I remember the movie stopping, the light going on, and a little face looking up at me and asking "oh, who are you?"

There isn't a whole lot of caution in that type of trust, no tentative behavior, no wondering if I've had a background check, or work well with kids,or have a cool hat. To be honest not much thought at all. I probably looked like a good big shadowy chair in the dark. It was the type of trust that was so entwined with simple action that it might be hard to separate the concept of trust from the act itself.

And I want to trust God like that. I want to throw myself at him when I'm in the dark and not even have to think about it. Those are the things I am learning this summer. I am learning to be hungry for a simple trust.

                                       Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
                                       and do not lean on your own understanding.
                                       In all your ways acknowledge him,
                                       and he will make straight your paths.
                                                                                       Proverbs 3:5&6

I think some days that verse was written for me - especially the leaning on your own understanding bit. I LIKE to understand. I like getting to know some of my little charges and find out what is driving them, why they are reacting and thinking the way they do. I want to go home and research strategies and behaviors and keep on experimenting in a quest to understand.

And understanding is not a bad thing by any means. But some days I come to the end of myself and realize, I'm not going to get that understanding.  And maybe that is because I need to step back for a minute and realize that this God we have is bigger than anything I am capable of comprehending.

I am learning that this God who does business in little things from the firing of nerve sequences in our brains, to which child is in which room with which peer group, is no less in charge of the details on a harder week than he is on one that is running entirely smooth (though I think that type of week might make me a little freaked out). He hasn't stopped weaving things together. I'm just in a place where it might not seem quite so obvious to my worm's eye view.

So what's working?
I am where I want to be, working alongside some amazing people, for the best goal I could think of, and I am learning a lot too: from ways to use touch to calm children to some deeper things rattling around in the maze I call a brain. Yeah, some things are working, and with God involved most likely they are way bigger than the ones I see that I think need to be fixed.