Camp

 

The 2015 CITs

 

I was at cancer camp this past week--I left home on Sunday, June 7 and arrived back home yesterday, the 12th. I learned some things while I was there. Things that I hadn't learned prior to this experience as a counselor-in-training.

There are only mirrors in the "biffy" at camp. The only mirror in our cabin was a small, circular thing that one of the counselors brought. I used it once. There is no time at camp to really even brush your hair let alone style it fancy, nor is there time to do up your face. The morning routine is wake up at a decent hour, get dressed in clothes you can get dirty in, brush your teeth, go to campfire, watch the other cabins do their cheers on the stage, and be goofy with your cabin while performing your cheer. Then you go to breakfast. Then you play all day.

There is no time to stress about the way you look. If you took time to stress about the way you look, you would lose time for focusing on trying to make camp the best ever for the kids. If you spent even ten minutes in front of a mirror, you would miss the giggles coming from your campers when they'd make up nicknames for their counselors and cabin mates, or when they'd play a game of "Little Sally Walker."

So I gained something very important while I was at camp this week. The amount of negative thoughts I had about myself were seriously cut down to a minimum. I did not once have any moments of solitary pity-parties or times where I was deep in my head and/or swimming in a negative energy. Granted, I was only alone for about an hour a day during my breaks, but that didn't really matter. The difference between the way I was living this week and the way I normally live was that I was constantly trying to make sure that the girls in my cabin were getting the most out of camp, and thinking always of them, rather than allowing myself to worry...about myself too much.

And that really did something to my heart. I feel better about myself. I have more confidence...it's a different kind of confidence than you're thinking. It's a sort of feeling that I am NOT the way I physically appear to others. I am who I am on the inside. I believe it's important to try to be my best self, but now I also truly know that it's not about my hair, my face, my body, my clothing...it's about the work I do first to serve others and how I try to emulate what Christ did. I'm pretty sure he didn't stress about being attractive to people, but rather he thought about what he could do to be helpful to people. He thought about what God wanted for him.

I'm not an expert at being selfless. There were times at camp where I slipped up and wished I could be receiving the attention campers do, or where I was bored because I couldn't participate in everything. But then I remembered that this camp is for these children who are currently going through things that I am not going through anymore. All that matters is that they are being swept up in a world of joy, laughter, no worries, and no grief, just for a little while. So I did my best to play my ever-so-small part in making that a reality for them.

And it felt good to just be a person with greasy sunscreen on my face, chlorine in my hair, and wearing old T-shirts from years ago. Actually, it felt good to not have the worries that I wasn't enough because of that. Wow. I will always have this beautiful cancer camp to thank...for many, many different things. It's honestly "the best place beneath the sun."