Two. [Dane and Tim.]

Two stories: Tim and Dane. I could tell stories about campers from Capernaum week for hours. But I won’t. not this time anyway. (hang in there, or at the very least, skip to the end. It gets good, I promise)

1.

Tim is quite possibly one of the most legit guys I’ve ever met. I’m still not positive what his diagnosis is, maybe CP, but I really don’t know. Tim was close to being classified non-verbal but he does make sounds and says some words. He is incredible. I first saw Tim before club one afternoon. (Capernaum camp does club backwards, and not at night). He has a scooter that he rides around on some of the time, but he’s also capable of walking. I was curious.

I met him, formally, the next day on the swing. He was in his scooter so I walked over to him to see if we needed to rig up our wheel-chair-pulley-system (a pain in the butt, but totally worth it every time). I asked Tim if he’d need us to rig up this system and he said no, he’d be able to climb the stairs, step into the swing and get himself out at the end of the ride. Mind blown #1.
Tim had a family with him, a mom, dad, sister and brother, but not his family. I’m still a little confused about all that. It was “policy” (more like preference) for us to put campers in chest harnesses, just to err on the side of caution so no one found out a little to late that they couldn’t support their weight when the swing was in motion (and to save us a heart attack). I walked over to Tim with a chest harness and told him that I was going to help him into it. He got a little mad. But nowhere near as mad as the “father” that was with him. “Tim bikes five miles a day, he’s stronger than I am! (this guy was not small) He doesn’t need that!” He was adamant to say the least. And we were nervous. Tim didn’t look like he’d be able to hold himself upright, he didn’t look like he’d be able to climb up the stairs. But he could. And he did. Over, and over, and over again. Tim rode the swing at least twice a day. And by the end of the week, he was cutting the cord. Tim has so much joy. He laughs, he smiles, he jokes with us: about chest harnesses and muscles and biking THIRTY-FIVE MILES IN ONE DAY (mind blown #2).

I can’t really put my finger on it, but Tim had something about him. There was something that stuck with me. His smile. His spirit. His laugh. Something was different about this kid. Tim’s life couldn’t have been easy up to this point. People (guilty) always judging him by appearance and assuming he couldn’t do things by himself…or at all. He could have easily gotten angry with me when I asked to put a chest harness on him, or if he could use the stairs, but he didn’t. He has a heart like I desire, a gentleness that I covet. And I feel so, so blessed to have met him.

2.

Dane was a cool kid. He is nonverbal and his buddy/leader is so, so devoted to him. I’m sure he told Dane the names of hundreds of people when they were at camp. Dane would always make a motion at people and that meant that he wanted to know their name, and Dane’s buddy would dutifully and joyfully repeat name after name after name to Dane. One afternoon at club, Dane and his buddy were picked to play a game. The buddy was supposed to stack as many Oreos on top of the campers’ forehead as they could before time ran out. Dane and his buddy lost…by a lot. But that’s because Dane kept asking his buddy for the Oreos so that he could eat them. (I would have wanted that, too, lets be honest, this kids got the right idea!) But even then, in the midst of eating Oreos to his hearts content, Dane didn’t smile. Throughout the week I would see Dane, but never smiling. I don’t know if I just missed it, or if it never happened.

Until one day when Dane and his buddy came to ride the swing. The swing can be exhausting. It’s hot. And you never stop sweating. EVER. And campers never put on their harnesses right the first time. And kids always crowd the deck. And you say the same thing every time a group gets on the swing. And 1 in 4 campers always get upset that they have to wear a chest harness. And it just gets tiring.
Dane came to ride the swing that afternoon and it was nothing special. He had the same expression as always, and I wasn’t expecting anything “life-changing.” But God has a funny way of turning the ordinary into extraordinary. Dane’s smile after they pulled the ripcord could go down in my book as the biggest I’ve ever seen. It’s crazy to think that something so simple to the rest of us could possibly be the one thing that makes a kid smile all week.

And it makes me wonder, how much do I take for granted? How much joy have I been given every day that I overlook? I want to be the kind of person that gets extraordinary joy from ordinary circumstances because I am so compelled by the love that my Savior has for me. And because I see in every thing that my God is blessing me beyond what I can begin to comprehend. I want to be Dane experiencing the swing for the first time. And I want to be Emily so, so happy that every 2 minutes I yell “Group Hug!!” and embrace whoever is closest to me, because the Lord has blessed me, and I don’t know how else to deal the joy that comes from that. I want to stop overlooking the little things. And I want to stop being so consumed with what “doesn’t go right.” I want to believe 100% of the time that God is blessing my mess. And when I tend to believe that there is no way to see grace, or beauty, or joy in something, I want to fight that. And I want to see it. I want to see joy. And I want my heart to smile so big that it goes down in record books. Because my God loves me. And He desires me to be joyful. And I long to fulfill His desires.

“Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,” -1 Peter 1:8

“Then you will look and be radiant, your heart will throb and swell with joy;” –Isaiah 60:5

“…with divine retribution he will come to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. The will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy.” –Isaiah 35:4-6

“he sees God’s face and shouts for joy.” –Job 33:26
oh that I would see God’s face constantly, and live a life that shouts for joy.

One.

I’ve decided to do “installments” of blogs. because those fifteen days at NorthBay were too big for one blog. And I’m using the word installments because it’s 10 at night, I’m on medicine and it seems like the dumbest, best word I can find right now.

Well, blog, here we go.

Needless to say, I’ve been putting this off. Which is weird because I love to blog about things that happen to me.

I guess I just didn’t have the words to say this time. How does one put in to words the experience I just (more or less) had at NorthBay? I find that I’m struggling with that a lot, actually. On our last night while we were anxiously awaiting an anti-climactic climb to the top of a water tower (anti-climactic because it didn’t happen) a friend asked “what has the Lord been teaching you since you’ve been here?” and I couldn’t really answer. Not because I hadn’t learned anything, but because I didn’t really know what I had learned. At least not in that moment. 

It’s hard to say in words how living in community like we did made my heart smile so big, and how that 15 days of community will keep me going.

It’s hard to articulate exactly how wiping up a kid’s urine on the swing humbled me beyond what I thought was possible (or necessary, for that matter) and how that will always stay with me. But the least I can do is try:

Hands and feet of Jesus. That was our “slogan” on summer staff. And I found that to be more burdensome at times than encouraging. It was great when things were going really well, when kids smiled and waved at you or gave you hugs towards the end of the week because they remembered you and thought you were the “bees knees.” 

And when those very same kids you coached through the giant swing stood up at say so on the last day, you could say with utmost confidence “I was the hands and feet of Jesus this week.” 

But when a Capernaum camper relieves himself on the swing and doesn’t even know that he’s done it and you are the lucky one that gets to wipe it up, telling yourself (and even others, in my case) that you’re the “hands and feet of Jesus” starts to become a pride issue. 

Hands and feet of Jesus no longer means being humble and serving Him by serving kids, it no longer means having a servants heart and loving kids so that they’ll, in turn, see Jesus. It doesn’t mean that you are considering it a joy to do this work. It becomes an issue of pride. It equates me with the Lord of all creation. I put myself on a pedestal because I cleaned up a campers pee. I was not humbled by it; I gave myself credit for it. I patted myself on the back for it and expected others to do the same. When in reality, (figurative reality that is) that’s what all service should be. Whether I’m doing something “beneath me” like cleaning up pee or doing something beautiful, like carrying someone confined to a wheel chair on my back in the pool or at crud wars. It’s all so that kids see HIS glory. And it doesn’t matter who does it, or how bad it smells, or that you get in trouble for not wearing gloves when you do it. The point is that you do it. And it’s a joy. It’s a joy to be chosen by the creator of the universe to be His ambassador. To represent Him here on this earth. 

Real talk: Jesus would’ve cleaned up pee and then some. Jesus would’ve traded pants with this kid, so he didn’t have to walk around in his shame and embarrassment the rest of the day. Jesus would have told everyone that He was the one to pee in the swing. The kid would’ve gotten off scoff free. The beautiful thing? That’s exactly what He’s done for each of us. He has taken my soiled rags and exchanged them with His fine linens. He has not only covered my shame and embarrassment but removed it from me and taken it as His own. And He doesn’t care that I cleaned up pee. He cares that I love Him. and He cares that I love Him enough to want others to love Him. and it doesn’t matter what that looks like, it just matters that it is.

What did North Bay teach me?

Community.

Humility.

Service.

Love.

Maybe it wasn’t everything I expected it to be, but I’m so glad it wasn’t. I’m happy that I have friends whose absence makes my heart ache. I’m happy that I can look back at those fifteen days and see beauty. Not boyfriends, or crushes, or enemies, or a complete transformation in my life. But I see best friends, and redemption, and blessed conversation, and service, and I see God chipping away at my inadequacies. Inadequacies that might not be as big as they used to be, but are still there, and are still a stumbling block to me every day. But more than that, I see a God that hasn’t given up on my sinful, unreliable, ungrateful, prideful self. And there is so much grace in that.