My childhood summers were incomplete without a week spent at the West Virginia Baptist Camp at Cowen or "Camp Cowen," as it lovingly known. As my mother drove Route 82 to camp, I knew I would sing campfire songs all week about bananas and mangoes, lace fingers with a fellow camper as we balance on an elevated wooden beam on the challenge course, and be immersed in God's Word. Camp Cowen is the place where I feel God most intimately. As I sit in a rocking chair or atop a rock and listen to the soft, persistent rush of the Elk River, I know God is near in a way that I am unaware of in my daily life. Maybe it is the distraction of modern life -- the buzzing cell phone in my palm, the television on in the background, my laptop heating the tops of my thighs -- that impedes or more honestly, enables, my ability to ignore that still, small voice. My cell phone reads No Service and a television is absent in the isolated backwoods of Cowen. I have a sense of peace, because the world suddenly sheds its hyper-connected skin. For entertainment, we have to work out our brains and bodies with card games, reading, and four square. It is Holy Ground.
Last week, I became a counselor at Camp Cowen for the first time. I would spend a week counseling and mentoring students in middle school. My cabin girls reminded me so much of myself and my friends as campers. I whooped and hollered with the girls when we won our flag football competition and taught students how to find the Book of Romans during Bible study. Ten years ago, I needed help finding Romans. I had counselors and pastors and friends pour into me, to help me find my way. This November marks the 10th anniversary of my public profession of faith, my Baptism, a journey I started at my home church, but solidified at Camp Cowen. At the camp which I counseled, 19 people accepted Christ, beginning their own journey.
I went to Camp Cowen for the first time the summer before sixth grade. In hindsight, it was not a good week, because I was inconsolable from homesickness; I cried all the time. I'd never been away from home or my parents for that long. Though, as the summers of my childhood slipped away like sand between my fingers, I enjoyed camp more and more. I met one of my best friends, Kayla, during the second summer when we carpooled, and one memorable summer, my sister had to eat contents of the slop bucket for messy game night, a frozen corn dog covered in strawberry preserves and other savory condiments. I spent the first summer writing letters to my family each day, but the letters became more infrequent as I became more immersed in God's Word and the camp's activities. The people in my small group and counselors challenged me to actually open and absorb the Scriptures, to connect with the Bible in more than just a surface-level Sunday school story way.
Even as I wrestled with my faith, trying to outrun God, Camp Cowen was and is a sanctuary in which I have to confront the hard questions of faith and allow myself to rest comfortably in God's grace. How grateful I am for this respite. May God bless Camp Cowen and the staff and counselors that continue to pour into me and goad me on as an adult.
