"the best week of my life"

   I was digging through my closet trying to find that wayward boot when I stumbled across the old tattered postcard.

   I guess old is kind of an exaggeration, since I received it no earlier than four months ago, at this past summer's church camp. Still, the card was worn from lots of grasping between tightly clenched fists, and the ink was noticeably smeared from when I accidentally spilled my Gatorade all over it, giving it a rather antique look.

   I reread it, and sighed a little. I never wrote about my church camp from this summer (not His Hill...that was an entirely different story) because it was far too difficult. Not in the sense that I couldn't put it to words, but more that the words were too painful to write down.

   I glanced across the postcard, at my v-team (velocity team, like a youth group sector) leader's curvy handwriting. She had said she appreciated my quiet strength, and I glowed a little. It's not often anyone refers to me as quiet. But what makes me sad is her closing line--I hope you're having the best week of your life, Andrea! followed by a smiley face and her squiggly signature.

   Best week of my life? I wanted it to be. I went with all these amazing plans to finally bond with the people in my youth group and to have this great Jesus High and come back and be this Changed Person. What followed was the worst week of my entire summer, maybe life.

   The first day, July 25th, was my seventeenth birthday! I was feeling kind of queasy getting on the bus, and halfway into the trip I knew something was wrong. I hadn't felt this sick in a long time, and frequent trips to the cramped bus bathroom weren't making it any better. When we arrived at Lakeview Camp and Conference Center in Waxahachie, Texas, where the campgrounds were located, I was horribly, undeniably raging with fever.

   I don't like to ask for help, and thought maybe I could just...walk it off or something. A leader saw I was kind of pale and felt my forehead, and thus began my trip to the nurse (first of many that week...) So while the rest of my youth group was having an amazing time downstairs playing basketball and volleyball in the gym, I was laying upstairs, dozing in and out, with my 101.7 fever in the weight room, thinking about the irony of being sick on the first day of camp, andddd my birthday.

   They thought about sending me home, but "home" was six hours south and the bus had already left and besides as the day passed my temperature was getting steadily lower until it had dropped down to 99.1 and they told me I could go to evening service. I was beyond relieved...even though it was my birthday and few people out of the thousands at the conference center knew or even cared, and I was still feeling pretty weak and dizzy, at least I wouldn't miss SERVICE!! <--My favorite part of camp, always.

   But during the pre-service rally, when the entire auditorium of middle and high school students were jumping up and down, fists in the air shouting along to Family Force Five, "HOLD ON, WAIT A MINUTE, PUT A LITTLE LOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVEEEE IN IT!"...I started to feel kind of claustrophobic.

   I cradled my head in my arms, this is so weird! I've never been claustrophobic before. Why can't I pick up on this energy everyone else has?! Where's MY energy? I feel tired...I can't keep my...eyes...open...

   And then I was running to the foyer and sitting on the tile, my knees curled to my chest. I remembered what it was like to black out--I had for the first time ever just a couple of weeks ago after a summer track meet. My heart pounded wildly--not again! I stayed conscious, breathing slowly and concentrating on the patterns of the tiled floor. I was joined by a few teens who slipped into the foyer to skip out on service--probably forced to come to camp, and here I was--exuberant about camp, and I wanted to be in there more than anything else, and couldn't.

   The "rebel kids" watched me circumspectly. I rubbed my eyes and tried to stay awake. I was just so tired, but they wouldn't let me go back to the cabin...and the rebel kids were ushered back into service and they thought I was one of them--me, who never skipped a camp service in my life!--and I was back in the auditorium, feeling very fragile, very forgotten, very alone.

   The girls in my cabin stayed up late that night talking, but I fell right to sleep. By morning, my fever was completely gone, but I was physically and emotionally drained, and it was only day two of camp! Now that I wasn't contagious, I decided to find some friends, since camp would be kind of a downer wandering around alone.

   I'm the kind of person who bonds to people through shared experiences, like soccer, or amusement parks, or thunderstorms. ;) I've always felt so different from the girls in my youth group, and it isn't helping that they see each other all the time at school and me only once a week. So, I'm kind of an outsider, but I felt like I could get to know them all better at camp. Or so I thought.

   They were nice. They were polite. They tolerated me. And I guess I could have followed them around, but I don't like to just be accepted because I'm there. I want to talk too! To have something important to say...and nothing was working out. I did, however, find two girls, one of whom had recently started going to our church and the other her best friend from school.

   Girl #1: "I'm anti-social." Great, now the other girls are going to think I am, too!
   Girl #2: "I'm new." I know the feeling...
   Me: "I've been coming to this church for a year now, and I still haven't really made any friends! I don't fit in, I'm the odd one out, and I was hoping at camp something would magically work out, but it isn't!!"

   I mostly hung out with them, but they were best friends after all, and paired off by themselves. I tried to find activities to do during the day, but I felt so numbingly alone all the time.

   Alone eating my ice-cream, alone kicking a soccer ball around, alone playing ping-pong...that's hard, let me tell you! Swimming alone is NOT FUN. You can only splash around for so long before it loses all its charm. The four afternoon hours where we were supposed to entertain ourselves through the provided recreational activities were pure torture.

   Why is it so hard to find like-minded girls? Why does everyone already have their best friends at camp with them? Why can't being alone be more...FUN?!

   On top of all this, everyone from my church was having great Jesus Moments at evening service, and I felt like He couldn't hear me. Where was He? Busy helping everyone else? At that point, I was feeling "okay" spiritually. Not needy, not phenomenal, just...okay. It seemed like I was continually viewed as "this homeschool girl who doesn't have nearly as many problems as these poor public school kids".

   It was true, I didn't. But as the week wore on, I started feeling emptier. I thought maybe I should put myself out of focus and look for others to help, but everyone. had. somebody. EVERYONE.

   At the beginning of the week, I'd decided to leave anything remotely stylish at home, along with my make-up. I don't need this, I rationalized. I'm not trying to impress anyone! It's camp! Rugged...outdoors...

   So I spent the whole week feeling pretty stupid and equally ugly, while the other girls looked amazing, as usual. And everyone had a boyfriend, not that I needed one, but watching other people seem so happy was hard...and...and...I locked myself in the bathroom sometimes to give myself a good shaking. You're feeling sorry for yourself, Andrea, which is pathetic! You are above self-pity.

   Wednesday night, during pre-game rally, I felt something crawling around my ponytail. I reached up to slap it and my whole hand burned. I brought my hand back down to earth and hardly recognized it. It was already swelling at an enormous rate, but I found the stinger and pulled it out.

   I'm allergic to bees--I'd been stung five times already and had figured it out along the way--but this was no bee. It hurt much worse, the stinger was very large, and I was definitely allergic to it too, by the way my hand was inflating and turning purple.

   So I've been going to church camp nearly every summer since second grade, and have never, ever had to visit the nurse's station for anything, and here I am--senior summer--and I've already been twice in one week. Some benadryl and ice helped relieve the swelling, but for the rest of camp my left index finger was three times its normal size. And verrrryyy red.

   By Thursday, I was still pretty dizzy from the combined after-effects of fever and large insect sting, lonely, empty, and overwhelmed. Lakeview's acclaimed lake activities had horrendously long lines, and I had just spent over an hour in line to water ski, and a group of thoughtless teens had cut in front of me, and then it was closing and it was the last day and I...needed to take a walk to clear my head.

   Instead of catching a golf cart back to the cabin, I decided to take the hilly trail through the woods. Unfortunately, thanks to my *great* sense of direction, I got completely turned around, wandered in circles for twenty minutes, and ended up on the exact OPPOSITE side of the camp, near Cabin #1. (We were Cabin #9, to give you some point of reference.)

   Well, this is just great, I thought, sitting down under a tree to...yes...sulk. By the time I go all the way BACK to the OTHER SIDE OF CAMP, the snack bar will be closed. The snack bar...my one loyal friend, always there for me to make me smile. (: I shut my eyes and felt a wash of misery. And that's when...those tears came.

   I thought of the postcard I'd gotten on the first night of camp, and all my hopes, and how I had, thus far, no Jesus Moments, no team sports, no friends, no one-on-one time with a counselor, and had, instead, a fever, swollen hand, forgotten birthday, and absolutely no fun memories to speak of.

   Where was this said "best week of my life" now? It was my last summer of church camp, and I was sitting on the outskirts of camp, probably breaking a rule--not that anyone cared enough to come find me--and crying about everything and nothing.

   Wait...it gets worse! hahaha. Well, I can laugh about it now, but at the time I was utterly. miserable. Anyways, as I'm standing up to start the long trek back to Cabin #9, I notice...hey, I'm not alone in the woods anymore! There's a group of teens from another church about fifty feet away, and a guy breaks away from them and starts walking toward me and

   I am completely freaked out. So, I shove my hands in my pockets and start walking slightly faster toward my cabin, hoping he'll see this as a sign that I just don't want to talk to anyone right now! But, he follows behind, and I feel like this is getting very creepy, and I walk...just a little quicker.

   "Wait," he says, and I stop a little, because his voice isn't creepy at all. Maybe nice, even. "Can I ask you a question?"
   "Sure," I say, turning around, hoping he can't see I've been crying.
   "Do you know Jesus?" he asks, and his eyes are kind.

   My world kind of freezes, and I try to see myself from his perspective...a loner in the woods, sitting by myself against a tree, crying on the second-to-last day of camp, when everyone else is bouncing off the walls.

   "Yeah," I say softly, "yeah, I do." I start to turn away again, but hesitate. "But--thanks for asking."

   "No problem," he says, and rejoins his friends.

   My camp story doesn't exactly have a happily ever after, and I never see Witnessing Dude--the one person who bothered to go out of their way to talk to me--again, and I return home, getting an incredibly sore throat in the process. <--Which is ironic, considering I possibly talked the LEAST that week.

   So four months later, I'm holding the postcard and remembering why I didn't rush home to blog about my "amazing camp experience". Part of it was self-inflicted--I could have tried a little bit harder not to wallow in self-pity. Still, when I remember, there's a part of me that will always feel kind of let down. Kind of sad. Kind of lonely. Kind of ugly. Kind of dizzy. Kind of forgotten.

   But, surprisingly, I'm over it. It's okay! The "best week of my life" helped develop a lot of character traits in me I wouldn't see until later...waiting on God, relying solely on Him, seeking Him before friends, listening for His still, small voice outside of the booming chaos of rocking evening worship...and somehow, life went on.