5 Things I Couldn't Learn Anywhere Else
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5 Things I Couldn't Learn Anywhere Else

Lessons from camp.

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5 Things I Couldn't Learn Anywhere Else
Jordan Howerton

For the past four summers, I’ve worked at camps here in West Virginia. It’s been an uphill climb at times, an exhilarating ride at others. It’s been hard, it’s been fun, it’s been stretching and it has been just as consistently soggy, sweaty and exhausting. A lot can get lost as far as focus, at times, and a lot can be lost as far as memory. I know it has and was this summer. All the same, the take-aways for me come rushing back, in what is that relaxing but saddening post-camp/pre-fall state, and have been undeniable; those moments and truths that have changed the way I see, believe, and act towards people and myself.

1. They Are Watching

It goes without saying, but summer camps are the unique experiences of kids. They come all full of excitement and ready to see all of their friends from the previous years, ushered on by the oftentimes more or less relieved (or entirely freaked out) hands of their parents… into yours. It’s an incredible experience coming to camp, getting to swap stories of your years as a camper, to hang out after curfew playing cards or just hanging out after a long day of herding cats, carrying water hoses, or sitting atop a lifeguard tower without being able to jump in yourself. But at the end of the day, we must never forget that those little ones are watching us. And even when they exit the realm of being little ones, they are going to watch us still, maybe all the more. A water football thrown too hard at a fellow counselor starts a war of epic proportions that you have to act as arbiter of before (or as soon as) someone gets a busted nose and tears start to flow or fists start to fly. The old adage rings nowhere more true than at summer camps: actions speak louder than words. Our words can be encouraging, helpful, and even come from genuine places of love or goodwill, but if our actions don’t line up, it won’t matter that we’re bigger and know what we’re doing when we do flips off of the bouncy castle; it happened and it looked friggin’ awesome.

2. They Are Listening

I know, I know; see above, right? But oddly enough, they are listening more or less. One camp I went to perennially stresses the importance and power of “teachable moments;” those moments when a child asks you a question, engages with you or even just wonders about something in front of you in general. When they come to you to learn, or just to talk; they listen. They hang on your words. It appears as though this happens less and less as children get older, but this is an illusion, really. So many things can be passed down as they listen; listen to our conversations, listen to our answers, listen to our excitement, our disappointment, or listen to our silence. As they get older, their desires to see you be strong, be compassionate, be understanding, be a man, be a woman, or just be there increases more and more, while their desire to conceal has a positive correlation. As they get older, your words are bigger and bigger parts of your campers lives, despite the fact that more and more of them are being fed empty, hateful, or insincere words for the other 50 or so weeks of the year. Hearing you care with your words, care to correct, care to praise, care to respectfully respond, can do a world of good. Hearing you be sarcastic, tear down, mock, crudely joke, or obfuscate can be equally as damaging. Let it be said that while actions speak louder than words, words speak and actions do not. Just think of what words, whether they be spoken or on the page, have done to you. How they’ve made you elated, delighted, motivated, low-down, darkened or discouraged. Few things hit us with such acute yet prolonged impact.

3. By Default You Are Unlike Anyone Else

I’m not saying we camp counselors are better than our non-counselor peers and colleagues because we gave up a week to stay out in the sun for 6 hours a day every day, eat cafeteria food for every meal, and be given the most interactive birth-control seminar known to man. I am saying we’re better off for being not a parent, but responsible for those kids as if they were our very own. Not a sibling, but kidding around and joshing with them and making them laugh despite being utterly uncool and unfunny. Not being a pastor, but hearing these kids be honest about their lives at home, their feelings, their questions, and their deepest hurts. You’re better off because you’re none of these things, you’re all of these things. You’re a camp counselor. You exist in that almost mystical place in a child’s life where these things intersect next to bunk beds before turning in and in mud pits playing tug of war the next morning. It becomes, unfortunately, more and more latent in our campers as they get older, but the humility of a child will never be more real to you then when they are your kids. It is displayed best and most in that simple attitude of love and adoration that kids get to have for their counselors, and it will change you. To have these kids unconditionally call you their own, listen to you, emulate you, and respect you is unlike anything in the world, and brings both new pressure and new freedom to the idea of loving like a child.

4. What Your Campers Are Doesn’t Matter

For a month straight this summer, as part of my Bonner Summer of Service, I have been a counselor to as many as 12 young men and as few as one, and each of them have been so vastly different. Athletic, intelligent, artistic, introverted, extroverted, urban, suburban, rural, well-behaved, difficult, white, black, bi-racial, wealthy, poor, somewhere-in-between; virtually any distinction that can be made of human identity was present there in the boys I was responsible for this summer. But, despite all the distinctions, the challenge of being a counselor is seeing the university in your cabin. By university I mean the classical definition of that word, which is a portmanteau of the words “unity” and “diversity.” The university is meant, through studying all the varied shades of life and reason and logic in their expressions in the humanities, the liberal arts, the sciences, and the fine arts to find the common thread in all of them. For me, the matter is settled when trying to find the unity in the diversity of my boys; their value. The bigness, the intimacy, and the intentionality of God in designing and aligning the lives of all of them (and of redeeming any of them) points to the status of each of them, no matter their height of coordination, their money or aptitude. They, and we, are the Longines, Rolls-Royces, and Guccis of the universe, because of the precision, beauty, and power of our creator. We are not just imprinted with His stamp, His logo, or even His seal, which we can be and is especially incredible in and of itself, but we are made at our core as mirrors meant to behold Him, broken and in need of His turning us back to Himself. So, if this is true, what is a mental challenge? What is a physical disability? What is a learning deficiency? What is a behavioral disorder? What are glasses or height or color or weight or any other visible thing? So what these campers bring to me as their counselor is not a problem child, a product of a broken home, a brat, a goody-two-shoes, a kid from the ‘hood, a jock, a nerd, or a gamer; they bring me themselves, the crowning glory of an infinitely more glorious and majestic creator. It’s not what your campers are, it’s who they are; created on purpose, fallen in this hopeless and futile world, broken by sin, but the objects of the greatest love ever known, and candidates for redemption.

5. I’m Bad At This

As a famous pastor once said in an open letter to his colleagues in the ministry, “my brothers, we are not professionals.” That statement is just as true when applied to we camp counselors. My brothers and sisters, we are not professionals. I can speak only for myself specifically, but I feel as if I speak for all of us generally when I admit that despite all you read above, more than once every day I would not heed my own advice. I would act in ways not in accordance with what I would say or claim to believe, and I would speak words that seemed harmless to me that fell below what I am called to speak, were careless or crude or bitter, or just downright harmful to the hearer. Too often I didn’t allow the investment of love, trust, admiration, and excitement that those students imparted to and showed me to be reciprocated or directed upwards; I would absorb it selfishly and proudly, believing it meant I was strong, I was the best, all the while craving that approval to make me seem strong in a self-defeating circle of self-worship. Too often I didn’t value the beautiful spark of the divine in these students but rather saw only their throwing chicken nuggets across the cafeteria, bullying their fellow campers, being overly obsessed with video games, having outbursts of anger and fighting, or inwardly shaking my head and chuckling at their very intense but very ill-placed pre-teen angst. All of these things and things like them must be dealt with but focusing on them, allowing myself to be frustrated by them, losing my cool at them and, worst of all, letting them lead me to a break in my love for these kids is all missing the mark of seeing these kids as eternally valuable. I have been in some of those places this summer. But for all these failures, I can point to flickers of hope as young men have imitated me and emulated me in serving my brothers and sisters, as they have listened and asked questions and been enlightened (along with me) as I spoke, or laughed or smiled with me in wholesome and true joy. More importantly, they looked above me as I, in those far too seldom moments, reflected my light to its source in front of them. So, it became apparent to me that I’m bad at this, and odds are we all are. And that’s okay, for me. I believe that my perfection isn’t the deciding factor in my destiny; I believe Christ’s is. Don’t get me wrong, to be His is to be made holy; that's what it means, nothing more and nothing less. But He knows I will fail and will falter and that sometimes this broken world just straight up won’t work right. Fortunately, His calling is such that goodness is the natural fruit, the effect and the product of (and not the prerequisite or even the rubric for) His acceptance.

And that's what I've seen this past summer; kids loving me and their counselors sincerely but imperfectly, by virtue of nothing but (and at times in spite of) being slapped together in a cottage in the woods or the reduced price dorms of some college somewhere. No wonder that the faith and humility we need, according to Jesus, is said to be that of a child's.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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