Joy

Don’t let comparison steal your joy.

This has been on my mind a lot lately as our retreat season gets busier and busier and we start to step over into preparing for summer camp as well.

My job this summer is to be the assistant to our office registrar. I’m very excited about this job change and have been slowly transitioning into this role as summer gets closer. However, I still miss the craziness of retreats and feel like I’m a little on the outside the reach of that exploding piñata.

Don’t get me wrong, my introverted self is certainly enjoying my time in the office and I know I’ll have plenty of opportunities this summer to interact with campers and counselors.

And I’m letting the comparison of what I’m doing to what the rest of my team is doing get to me in a negative way. And it’s stealing my joy a little bit.

And I’m not the only one. Others on my team have compared job loads, hours, and responsibilities to one another and it’s draining us of our happiness.

One thing I’ve realized though is that we need to choose our joy. We get to be content in any situation because the Lord brought us there and what good is it to count your sorrows?

So, just remember this old hymn and know it is true even now.

“Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,

it is well, it is well with my soul.”

Happy Belated Easter!

  

For Easter this year I went with my friend Morgan to a Cowboy Church. I’d never even heard of such a thing, but there it was, this open-air arena fit for a rodeo, plastic chairs in the sand and bleachers to one side, saloon doors swinging open to the bathrooms.

We sang hymns like country singers would and then we experienced a more contemporary worship band (James Curlin Band) and soon after we were responding with “Amen!” to our animated African-American preacher.

It felt so jumbled and yet in each part of the service, the Lord was there. We all know He doesn’t fit into any sort of type, category, or box. He’s not found only in nature, only in church, only in our prayers in Bible studies. He’s everything and everywhere. He’s in our sadness when saying good-bye, He’s in our conversations and laughter with friends, He’s in our lazy moments by the pool. He’s alive now, for us, for always.

Morgan and I on our way to Easter Service.

Rain & Things

It’s been raining a lot here at camp lately and everything is such a lively green.

I will not even pretend that I can write about nature and this gorgeous earth with any sort of depth or intelligence. I’ll just let you read some Annie Dillard for yourself.

"The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn't ... but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world's water and weather, the world's nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz."

Annie Dillard (b. 1945), U.S. essayist and autobiographer. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

This entire book is the best book about observing the natural world that I’ve read. You should too.

Happy Spring y'all!

(all images taken at Camp Cho-Yeh by yours truly)