A day and a half until I don’t know whether to enjoy my newfound freedom or mourn that the kids are gone.
Every week I go through the same ritual of watching them leave. I’ll say, “Goodbye,” but not, “See you later.” I don’t say much, though - that would be awkward and a mistake. Mostly, I just watch them bouncing away, telling their parents about what happened that week. Generally, they are talking too excitedly to say anything to me, and I guess that’s a good thing. Thank yous and Goodbyes are not why I came back to camp this summer, anyway.
Perhaps I came back because of times like when I told a kid that if he didn’t stay with the group, I’d carry him over my shoulder the rest of the way. He turned around and said, “Do it! Please?” and then they all started arguing over who would get to go next.
Maybe it is because I never grow tired of asking, “Who Rocks the House?” (You know, my Jesus rocks the house!)
Maybe it is because of the times when I’ve noticed 6 to 8 little boys matching my every move while we’re singing. If I raise my hands, they do, too. If I clap and move around, I do it with several small shadows.
It’s possible, too, that it has something to do with how well I sleep at night. Schoolwork doesn’t lead to nights when I fall asleep right away. Working with children does, though; at least, it does until they leave. After they’re gone, I stay awake long into the night, imagining who they will become, wondering how much they’ll remember of the goofy counselor named Zach who let the babies pull on his beard and the boys ride on his shoulders.
Sometimes the campers say funny stuff:
Dear God,
Thank you making each one of us special and loving us even though sometimes we’re allergic and can’t do stuff.
And sometimes they break your heart:
Dear God,
Help me at the police station today.
And then you find out what they would be saying if they knew the right words, and it gets worse. Turns out, the camper was concerned with telling an interviewer about how her father had touched her and her sister when they went to visit him.
But she’s only seven…only seven…. Unfortunately, 7 years is long enough. And then we don’t know what to do with her. She seems to crave male attention, but if we show her too much, she could learn to unhealthily seek attention of the men in her life. However, if guys pull back too much, she’ll believe that there is something wrong with her. Welcome to the confusing world of a camp counselor.
There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, “Father, give me my share of the estate.” So he divided his property between them.
Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
When he came to his senses, he said, “How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’” So he got up and went to his father.
But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”
But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” (NIV)
Today, at game time, a camper came up to me crying uncontrollably. He was unable to say a single word at first. Finally, after I calmed him down, he told me that Ethan had hit him twice. When I asked Ethan, he denied everything, right down to even touching the other kid. Since one camper’s word against another’s doesn’t add up to me being able to do anything about it, I let Ethan off with a warning that I better not hear about this kind of thing happening again.
Ah, Ethan. If you’ve worked with kids, you know the type: every stitch of clothing is Abercrombie & Fitch, his hair excruciatingly placed, even though it is always under a hat that he always has set at a very particular angle. Goes around flirting with the girls and giving goofy handshakes to the guys. He’s smart, though, and very mature for 11, and always asks intelligent questions. You can tell he’s lived some already.
Anyway, five minutes later, a kid who strikes me as fairly impressionable named Tyler comes up to me and admits to hitting the first one. Though somewhat suspicious, I had him apologize to both the hurt camper and to Ethan, but thanked him for coming forward and doing the right thing. I guess that last part really bothered him because, not ten minutes after that, Tyler came back and told me that he had been set up to take the blame by Ethan.
I kept this to myself until close to bedtime. After my kids were in their rooms, I went down to Ethan’s room on another floor and asked him to step out in the hallway with me. I sat down out there where no other campers to hear us, and said, “I know what happened at game time.”
“I didn’t do anything,” he said.
“Tyler told me that you got him to lie to me.”
“I didn’t tell him to do anything”
After a little more back and forth, during which his story changed three times, I finally said, “Ethan, I know what happened. And between hitting another person, lying to me, and then convincing someone else to lie to me, too, I think you know that you’re in trouble.” His eyes widened, and then he looked at the floor and nodded. “But before I say anything else, I want to ask you a question. What should I do now?”
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care?”
“….I care, but it’s up to you, not me.”
“Well, you’re right. It is my decision. And I’m going to tell you what my decision is. Look at me. Ethan, I’m going to forgive you.”
Ethan lost it completely. He put his head on my shoulder and started to cry, softly at first, then louder, all while quietly saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” between sobs. I told him that I think that punishment can make us into better people, but so can forgiveness. Then I leaned over and told a familiar story. I said that the love in the story was what I was passing along to him. This made him cry even more - not at all what I was expecting.
I then said that I was glad he was at camp, that I loved hanging out with him and that, most importantly, I still wanted to be around him and that he shouldn’t try to avoid me (the kids tend to do that with the counselors they get in trouble with). As far as I was concerned, it was over. I had no dirt on him. He cried a little more, then gave me a long hug and went to bed. All this from a kid who never acts anything but completely collected.
What was the story I told him? There was a man who had two sons….
At the end of a long day of Learning to Lead, we always have a devotional in the amphitheater, and I usually sit next to campers who are discipline issues. Last night I sat next to a kid named Matthew. Matthew a smart kid, but devotionals are hard for him because he doesn’t like to sing. So mostly, he’ll just sit there and distract other kids or ask questions in the only volume range he knows: loud. Deep philosophical questions like, “Does girls hair grow faster than boys?”
But last night, as he was standing next to me while most people sang, he got a funny look on his face as he looked at the Tower of Light. His eyes just looked more and more heavenward, with a childish look on his face. Almost enough to make me forget how much trouble he’d been.
When we sat down, he leaned over to me and, in a softer voice than he normally possessed, he whispered in my ear, “There’s 120 bricks in this side of the tower.”
Shucks.