It Has Come to an End...Sort Of - Camp La Vida 2011

So bloggers, the summer is over. Camp is done and I have moved back in to PC and am awaiting the start of the school year. But one thing God really revealed to me the very last day of camp that although the summer was over, in a way camp never comes to an end. For the entire summer I never really believed I was making an impact on these girls lives at all. I knew in my head that I was, but I just didn't believe it. And God finally revealed to me on the last day how much I really do make an impact on these girls lives, by simply doing my job. At the age I was working with, the impact was just loving them the best way I was able to and that is what it looked like to give all of myself to them. Loving them just meant swimming with them in the pool, dunking them in their favorite game of Colors during pool time every day for 45 minutes a day although I was feeling tired of the game, singing the same song over and over because they love it so much, giving them a hug when they are homesick and comforting them, etc. And hopefully God will bring them back to camp year after year because they had a ton of fun with me and He will use someone else at camp to spiritually impact them. And praise God if He does or if He doesn't because I have made a spiritual impact on these girls whether they know it or not, by showing them how much God loves them everyday for a week even if they never see it again. Praise God for the fact that God could continue to use that week at camp to work in their hearts for the rest of their lives and praise God that He will continue to teach me things through my summer at camp!

Valentine's Day

So something that I fail to talk about a lot on here for various reasons are my struggles, which is such an important part of my walk with Christ as I have noted in a previous blog post. But here's something I can share with you all. So throughout my teenage years just like any other teenage girl I had a few crushes in high school and such but for the most part, and there have been one or two exceptions, but for the most part I have been sincerely content in singleness. And since coming to college and coming to faith, this has not been something I have struggled with a lot. I have been content in where the Lord has me right now - being single. I saw friends of mine struggle with this and sympathized with them but to an extent I did not know what it was like to truly struggle with singleness especially now. Lately, this is an area I have begun to struggle in. It has been so much harder now because I am fighting to be patient and wait in the Lord's timing, allow the Lord to lead the right guy to me, allow the right guy to initiate and step in to his role as the leader. It has been hard to fight my motives and initiatives and old methods of wanting to pursue the guy. So of course, today being Valentine's Day and meant to celebrate love, I found it a little hard. But today I saw myself just wallowing in the fact that I am single with no potential prospects even in sights and now that I think about it, this is so convicting! An entire day meant to celebrate love and I did not spend it with the my true love, where I find my true joy and the "person" that loves me to no end and so much more than I could ever know - Jesus. Because of other struggles my time with Him has been affected and I am realizing that it just makes things harder. I know I cannot deal with my struggles on my own and yet I attempt to anyway. I do not allow myself or Jesus the joy of running to Him and allowing Him to comfort me and take my yoke. Rather than running to Jesus in prayer about His love for me, being content in His love for me and my struggles with singleness, I wasted the day thinking about the fact that I do not have a guy in my life. Wow, so I have just told Jesus that His love for me is not good enough, that I need love from an earthly guy, that I need an earthly guy to tell me I'm beautiful, to cherish me. So basically I spent the whole day slapping Jesus in the face over and over again. Wow, again I see how sinful I am and even more so how my heart is deceitful above all things. (Jer 17:9)