Cornhole and Socks (Lydia's that is)

I feel as though I could write a novel a day. The little details of camp. But I don't have a notebook with me all the time,  and I definitely don't have time to write, so you get this: a mish-mash of moments and observations.

The other morning I went out on the field and the air was so humid and the sun was so hidden that the dew was still there at eleven in the morning. It made the grass silvery and all the footsteps of the morning classes left tracks like the beach or in the snow.

There is a camper who is here right now. When she smiles her eyes curve down and her mouth curves up, making the biggest, most lovable circle of joy around her face.  Her teeth take up nearly a third of the surface area of her face. The front teeth are a little too big, like many eight-year-old's are, and they are a little crooked on the sides, as her mouth tries to cope with the change from baby teeth. And like almost every child ever, there is normally a stain on her teeth from leftover chicken fingers or a ring pop from outpost.

On certain nights at the lodge between the hours of 10:30 and 11:55 you will find a group of staff on the front porch engaging in hardcore cornhole or hardcore rocking. I am in that position right now. My feet are crossed up in the chair and it's a little too small for me so the arms are digging into my thighs and the wicker seat is making marks in the side of my feet. If I think about it this is not very comfortable at all but it seems much better than having my feet on the ground.

Every time Lydia, in the chair next to me rocks, her arm catches the arm of mine and pulls it down disjointedly and I wonder if she looks over and reads what I am writing or if she is just letting me do my thing.

There is a loud arhythmic thud of the beanbags hitting the board and the encouragements and berating of the players, at others or themselves. Every minute or so Thomas will announce the score for those who care. And then he asks the Braves score from Laura who is sitting on the floor listening to the game on her phone.

Daniel is shooting against Dustin and the beanbags keep piling up around the hole.

To my left I have surrendered control of my camera to Meagan. She's filming the people around her, taking a break from talking to Rebecca on her right. The filming reminds Rebecca to tell a story about her time in China.

To my right Bailey is sitting her fleece, Grinch, pajama pants is watching the back and forth of the beanbags with a sleepy expression on her face. She is zoning in and out, much like Champ, still holding her phone.

James and Karina are on the end talking about her future plans.

At the board under the stairs Thomas is throwing against Lydia now. She's still wearing her tribal outfit of red shorts and long athletic socks.

At this point in the night its easy to get lost letting your head roll back and forth watching the beanbags fly over our heads and I think that this post is getting repetitive. I could go on writing but I need to stop.

So I'll leave you with one last observation from camp life:

The other night I lay on the pavement by field two, waiting to hand out gold coins to the campers for a game. I lay back and looked up at the sky. It was so open and perfect that it seemed like I could see the curve of the sky. The clouds looked like cotton that had been picked apart and stretched out against the bright blue. I made all the campers tell me a shape they saw before I gave them their coin.

The little moments make life. And mine is overflowing as of late. Keep looking for your own small moments and let them make your day.

"A Lone Wolf Set Loose Upon North Georgia"

Today was my day off and my biggest goal was to sleep. Done. Woke up at ten. Delightful. 

My family came to see me for a few hours and we sat in a park and talked and watched a squirrel literally do flips. Wouldn't you know I didn't have my camera. 

I came back and wandered aimlessly for a while before settling down to a kind of sad movie. Not the best three and half hours of my life. 

Then I went outside to write in a journal, which is below and the rest of the night will be in the pictures. 

Melancholy. 

It's not sadness, but it manifests itself similarly. 

The feeling that there's a blender at the bottom of your chest. Like it's creating a vacuum that churns your stomach and pulls on your heart till your insides feel like an indistinguishable mass. 

This is a symptom of sadness or of melancholy. 

Sadness is an attack, but melancholy I think is simply a complete inability to process, brought on by exhaustion.

So in an effort to combat the melancholy that makes me want to curl up in a ball and sob till I am drained of everything that could be confused, I'm redirecting with a list of things that make my heart happy.

1. The perfect asymmetric design of the white clouds, stretched out across the perfect blue of the sky. A sky so blue that the exact color has never and will never be harnessed or trapped to any medium other than reality.
2. That Laura, our photographer, just narrated her approach to hug me. "A walk, into a run...into a...jump!"
3. That I woke up and put a skirt on. I literally always wear bike shorts on under my skirts and dresses, but stil, wearing it and feeling the wind move the fabric around my knees or hearing the swish sound it makes as I walk. Something about wearing skirts makes me want to run on my tiptoes and use the words, "Flit" and "Flutter". 
4. Similarly, walking in bare feet. Something about being so solidly connected to the earth makes my hippie heart happy.
5. The phrase, "my hippie heart".
6. Finding different ways to capture and record life.
7. The silhouette of the leaves and trees against the sky.
8. Composition books and G2 pens. 

This is all I have written in the entry. For the purposes of this blog I am continuing the list for the rest of the evening. 

1. The smile on Danielle Harris's face and the way she let me borrow her car and escape the crazy melancholy of sitting by myself at camp.
2. Nearly every Ingrid Michelson, or He is We, song.
3. Overalls
4. The way my wheels turn while wandering Walmart alone. 
5. The conversations you have at random with cashiers in Walmart or Ingles.
6. Sitting by myself at the counter in Huddle House and enjoying a Western omelet and cheesy hash browns.
7. The conversations that people have with each other. (I heard a lot about eating cake from the cooks at Huddle House). 
8. The conversations that people have with me, especially after I tell them I can't eat bread. In case you were wondering the cook who expertly flipped my eggs in the pan by throwing it up in the air and catching it back "blows up" when she eats bread, but she still does. But she's starting to break the habit. She also compassionately scraped the griddle before cooking my food to get any break crumbs off. 
9. People surprising you with unexpected compassion.
10. Finding a present for someone that makes them laugh.
11. The feeling of being back with people, because going so long without interaction left a small hole in my fabric of being that was only partially filled by hugging a bunch of people and laughing way too hard with Mary Beth and Katlyn.
12. The way writing is therapy, worship, creativity and a processor at the same time.

PS - The title is what my sister said about me in a text when she asked what I did with the rest of my day.

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Grace: \ˈgrās\

unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification

I'm sitting on the cement square on the top the hill. My back is against the fiber glass rock that covers camp's well. As I sit I look down at, "The Oven".

"The Oven", by any other name is "Field Two" and it sits largely by itself, baking in the sun until 3:30 in the afternoon, when SNAG (Starting New at Golf) comes in.

Eight students and two instructors stand at the edge of the field, in the sun, and hit brightly colored, miniature, tennis balls at longs strips of tri folded velcro (the 'holes').

The moisture in the air starts to pool in the my bend of my elbow and along the back of my knee. Even though I've barely moved for twenty minutes, the sun is pulling sweat out of me like a magnet till it is running down my head and gathering around my nose.

Gross.

Then...grace comes.

A vacuum of air opens in the atmosphere around me and the particles of air rush to fill it.

A breeze.

Suddenly the sweat on my skin is helping me feel cooler. Making the breeze count for more than if it had been dry.

I want to take moments like this as reminders of grace, of the fall.

We fell away from God in the Garden. We fell away from His will and took the consequences of that. Pain, sweat, toil...sweat. But in the Garden God also saved our shame, and clothed us. One of the first acts of Grace.

Now we sweat and toil through and afternoon of golf in "the oven", and through colds, and long walks, and high temperatures, and bruised and scratched limbs, and difficult campers, and heartbreaking situations, and then, a breeze comes. Nothing but a vacuum of air being filled.

God created vacuums of air and it is Grace. We fell, we take the consequences, and God gives Grace.

The grace of a beautiful breeze.

^"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—  to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemptionthrough his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding..."  -Ephesians 1:3-8

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My Heart Will Sing, No Other Name

"You are good, You are good
When there's nothing good in me
You are love, You are love
On display for all to see
You are light, You are light
When the darkness closes in
You are hope, You are hope
You have covered all my sin

You are peace, You are peace
When my fear is crippling
You are true, You are true
Even in my wandering
You are joy, You are joy
You're the reason that I sing
You are life, You are life,
In You death has lost its sting

Oh, I'm running to Your arms,
I'm running to Your arms
The riches of Your love
Will always be enough
Nothing compares to Your embrace
Light of the world forever reign

You are more, You are more
Than my words will ever say
You are Lord, You are Lord
All creation will proclaim
You are here, You are here
In Your presence I'm made whole
You are God, You are God
Of all else I'm letting go

Oh, I'm running to Your arms
I'm running to Your arms
The riches of Your love
Will always be enough
Nothing compares to Your embrace
Light of the world forever reign

My heart will sing
no other Name
Jesus, Jesus"

Ramblings of an Arhythmic Night Owl

My day.

I woke up to my roommate and partner in crime, Mary Beth, informing me that we had somehow missed our alarms and in ten minutes I was supposed to be at the lodge helping to lead assembly. Made it on time...with time to spare. But I did loose my cellphone with the alarm on it until about four o'clock in the afternoon when Mary Beth's younger sister, also on staff managed to climb deep under my bed to unearth it. What would life be like for me without them?

Led assembly, more or less. I said the "Gooood Morning Strong Rock!!!" Then tried to lead a song that requires speaking in rhythm to the children's clapping. Every time I think about the rhythm I loose it. I continued in this for a few minutes until my other half (boy's head counselor) had mercy and took over...he had to take a minute to turn and laugh at me of course. I laughed a lot this morning.

I filled an empty spot in our Super Science class. We made cardboard cars propelled by balloons. Two boys set records as the best car in Strong Rock Super Science history. It was call the Shi-poodle.

I graded cabins. Overall a good day, 3 B's and 7 A's. The oldest boy's cabin finally broke the 90 marker. They also left a letter apologizing for a mis-led day of cabin-wrecking in an effort to achieve the lowest score...even though they even failed that.

I stayed in a cabin at rest hour to cover because one of their counselors was off for the day and the other had a doctor's appointment.  I told myself I wouldn't fall asleep...I did, but this time I got the alarm and successfully made it to outpost on time.

I ran outpost for the girls, then came up and met with Daniel about covering the afternoon festivities.

I watched a video that my brother posted on his wife's wall. It was this one. He said it was for the chorus.


I set up the screen for the movie and pinched the skin off the center of my finger. Then had to enlist Thomas to help put the screen on because I fail at getting it stretched the proper distance.

Filled in for fifth period cooking for the same two counselors who were absent in rest hour and learned how to make a buffalo chicken dip.

Went to the waterfront to do final set up for the girls beach party and discovered in was thundering pretty badly out. We pressed forward because the rain was not here, but when the conditions got worse we had to pull an audible and sent them all the cabins.

Pulled the videographer to help get the sound equipment put up and then made sure all the cabins were accounted for and that Pebblebrook was covered by our fantastic media staff in absence of either or their counselors.

Spent a ton of time on the radio trying to figure out what we were doing.

Hung out in cabins then went up to the lodge and helped get the food for the boys campout and run outpost and see them off.

Trip dropped me back off in the girls cabin area so I could tell them the newly formed plan for the evening.

Ran ahead of the cabins as they came to dinner and led an assembly with just the girls.

Set up the movie, "How to Train Your Dragon." Sat in the back with Trip.

Served ice cream halfway through then had an easy going staff meeting with the girls on the porch.


Watched the end of the movie.

Sent the girls back to their cabins with smiles on everyone's faces.

Decided with Trip to watch the second half of the movie we missed while in meeting.

Had a photo shoot with Trip, Spark, Dora and Justice. For no real reason.

Listened to the Lumineers.

Laughed an insane amount.

Downloaded Picasa to my computer so I could make photo collages.

Made a collage.

Watched Range kick herself out of the lodge.

Listened to Mary Beth cackle at "absolutely nothing" on facebook.

Posted this blog.

Went to bed.

 "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!  Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near.  Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, willguard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." -Phil 4:4-7

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Teal and Ash

This weekend I got to go home. It was restorative.

I was exceedingly blessed by so many people. People that had enough faith in my assurances to want to drive and hour and a half (thank you Dustin, Tyler, and Angela for giving your cars for rides!)

I was exceedingly blessed by my family, planning and hosting and loving the twelve of us.

There was dancing, food, movie watching, just sitting and talking, tetherball tournaments, pick up basketball, coffee, thrift stores, hiking, and a ton of laughter and music.

So much fun. In one of my favorite places in the world.

On Saturday, half the group went back to home but four boys decided to brave a day in my town which included hiking Wesser Bald and jumping in creeks (not photos of that) but before that we had to handle their laundry.

We spent about half an hour sitting in the laundromat finishing it up so I started taking pictures.

There were some fun details and fun colors.

I could write more, but as far as speed...photo blog was the easiest. Enjoy.

(And the boys didn't realize I was taking pictures...Brandon just smiled at the camera cause I filmed all weekend...every weekend.)