camp electric

700 students are cheering and yelling in the room next to me. 60 chaperones are currently occupied. a band is on stage, and the bass is making this otherwise quiet office have a pulse all its own. it is the first moment today i have had to truly catch my breath! there are so many things i love about this camp, and one of them is how fast-paced everything is. even though this is a stretch for me, it feels so good to be utilized in such an all-encompassing way. once again, i am reminded that work is an amazing thing when it is accepted as a blessing and done in an appropriate context. after these two weeks, i know my sleep-depraved, overworked body will be angry with me - but this feeling of utility greatly outweighs such concerns. life is good.

and as always when i leave town, some concerns and problems are left behind at my mailing address... while some tag along, attaching to suitcases or being themselves the baggage that i so often choose to carry in my heart. for those struggles that remain behind, i am grateful - for those struggles that remain with me, i still find that i am grateful. if travel was itself a complete refuge, i doubt i would see God as clearly as i do on days like today, when even glorious travel and "being away" seems to fail.

in between golf-cart drives, cafeteria food, power outages, happy students, angry parents, and a lot of new faces to treasure, i've been thinking once again about what i specifically have been placed on this earth to do and be... i have more dreams than ever before, but fewer plans to actually accomplish those dreams, than ever before. my world seems to daily narrow, but my horizons daily expand. and my biggest question is... haven't i felt this way since i was 14? sitting in my floor at my parents' home, with my new haircut and a heart newly claimed by a Savior... scratching out lyrics on an envelope, trying to learn chords to play all of "this" out into a melody. hasn't this been my life since then? in some small, consistent portion... hasn't this been the thread that God has used to hold me together? this longing, this holy ache for a way to transcribe all of this into scales and rhymes and rests and chords... where every minor and major of my life could actually find its way into an organized, beautiful pattern of what i hope my life could be - a song of something more.

...

just thoughts from a sleepy mind.

goodnight, World.