Love and Autumn

Today is one of those thoughtful days. The eighth anniversary of my grandfather's death, nearly a month marker since I began my fourth year of college and left my family in Vermont. And it is the first day of Autumn, the first day of fall 2009 which officially began at 5:18 this evening...

Every morning as I sit at the registration counter, I hear an insistent banging at the door at around 9:00 and look up to see them coming in, pushing their daughter to work in a wheel chair. It seems rather switched up-- they up and active, she looking tiny and frail, her hair white and fluffy and thin around her head as if it is one delicate dandelion puff that a sudden breeze might blow throughout the lobby. The unusual trio always looks up and wishes us all a good morning as they pass through and into the hallway, always cheerful, rather together-like. Several minutes later the elderly couple walk slowly back past my desk. I always notice then that they are somewhat stooped, their heads white too, and that they aren't perhaps the spry folks they once were. But then my eyes always stray down a little further to their hands for what I know I will see--fingers strong and tightly twined together.

The trees have begun just a little of their rosy-cheekedness around the parking lot and today the misty rain warmed up what will probably be the last wave of summer campus flowers. But there is a solemn beauty in it all that summer's ecstasy can't quite match.

Becky, Becky, can I have your signature?

She is my hero. I want to tell the world that she can take a shower by herself, that she can go on a trailride, that she will help sweep the the bathhouse with a bit of coaxing. I want to call home and tell them that she let me float her on her stomach in the swimming pool, that she let me braid her hair for church, that her love for bananas no longer keeps her from eating anything else.

I met her last year, a bright eight-year-old who bopped noisily into my cabin and claimed her bunk for the week. I didn't really no what to do with a child with Aspergers, and neither did she know what to do with me, a new authority figure in her world who didn't allow stuffed animals to come to dinner time and who asked her to stay with the rest of the cabin. And so we spent our week in some sort of warfare, physical and spiritual, both of us with tears in our eyes, though tears of rather different sorts. But I wanted to see her again.

This summer, if anything, she waltzes into my cabin with more zest for life, ready to introduce her Webkins to me, telling me to close my eyes and simultaneously unzip her bulging suitcase. I half expect the contents to burst out at me like a well-wound jack-in-the-box, well trained by their exuberant master.

I see immediately that she has grown. Her bright yellow sneakers are undoubtedly larger than last year's shoes, her figure a little taller. But throughout the week I watch as she initiates games with her cabinmates. I watch as she tries new food. I listen as she asks for prayer. I listen as she sings new songs she's learned. I feel her arm sneak around me in a hug at line call. Becky has grown. Something inside her has responded to love. Something inside her has awakened in response to the many prayers surrounding her presence at camp.

She's the one who gives me the words one Sabbath afternoon as the rest of the campers and I sit out on the porch, enjoying solitude and sunshine. "Hey--hey, do you want my signature?" she asks me, coming up with a stamp in hand. "Sure, Becky," I say, curious to see what will happen next. "You--you say. . . " she instructs me as to what I must ask her in order to receive the honor. Then I say what I've been dying to say all week: "Becky, Becky, can I have your signature?" And there on the yellow paper she plants her seal: the name JESUS inked in red and BECKY childishly scrawled below.

Camp Cherokee

And again: what can be said in a mere smattering of words that will adequately sum up a glorious six-and-a-half weeks at Camp Cherokee?

Of course there were many fun things of which I shall litter about some documentation...

Slaloming for the first time

Lovely Algonquin

Muddifying my legs

Visiting friends and picking huckleberries

Rustling bulrushes while watching over baby Moses

Swampy ventures with good friends

Choco and croc larks fueled by yummy breakfasts

Teaching horse lessons with the assistance of our hooved staff

But that is not half of it, or at least it ought not to be. It is about a heart altar and full submission.

It is about quiet moments with God on the dock. It is about a unified staff. It is about friendship and brother to sister love. It is about trial and prayer and repaired bathhouses and fixed swimming pools and righted wells. It is about stories of changed lives.

And it is about these ones.

Especially this one.

And there will be more.

True Friendship is a Knott Which Angel Hands Have Tied

And so it has happened. The White and the Blue Nile have joined into the one Nile, a river flowing through a desert land, a great swell of water that is life and a blessing to those around it because of its mighty Source...

Yes, I have cried tears. A brilliant blue bridesmaid dress could not prevent them, and neither could a reunion with my whole family. But they are droplets shed for an era past, not of real sorrow--they are for my childhood, our childhood. We grow, we blossom, we move on. And it is the acculmulation of all those growth spurts and transplants and waterings and buddings that has led to this celebration of two lives led by God's caring fingers. And I think that it is just as much for the wonder of this new and happy journey, for my brother and new sister, that I cry--joyful tears.

Happy Camper