so long, sweet summer

i feel like the "end of summer" cliche has been so overdone in many ways. just the words themselves conjure images of john travolta and olivia newton john crooning on the beach of some hollywood set and the melodies of countless pop songs float through my brain like an oddly composed summer medley.

but the end of my summer is approaching, and as ends of things are natural places for reflection, i have found myself thinking more and more this past week about the journey of my past year, much less the summer. i've been to africa and back. twice. i have learned to read and write a new language, smoked hookah for the first time, trekked through the atlas mountains, wandered the streets of paris, and spent the night in the middle of the mojave desert with a handful of friends and a myriad of stars as my companions. i have gotten a solid look at my future life as a full-time nurse (and i'm excited for it) as well as the beauty of living, just living and working - without papers or deadlines or exams to stress you out of your mind.

this year has also brought me face to face with the extreme hardships of poverty, and the tenuous place of receiving hospitality when you know that your host cannot possibly afford it. i have held an infant as it passed away, and held his mother when all was said and done. i have laughed until i couldn't breathe, and i have cried until i thought no more tears could possibly come. i have felt achingly lonely, and i have experienced the joy of being completely, deeply, and fully surrounded by human love. i have had my heart shattered, and i have learned how to live and love through it.

i have been taught a few basics of moroccan cooking, and some of the complexities of global development, environmental protection, and food justice. i have come to realize that there are freedoms present within this country of america for women and minorities that do not come so easily in other places, and i am still learning how to appreciate this state which issues my passport and this ambiguous thing we call "citizenship."

i have experienced boston fall, morocco winter, paris spring, and california summer.

needless to say, as i sit here and let these memories bubble up within my consciousness, i am bowed over by the diversity, and humbled by overwhelming gratitude. in so many ways, i am different from the lauren elizabeth fadely who, this time last year, was sitting at a coffee shop in east texas, only just beginning to fully process a summer spent in freetown, sierra leone.

and then, when i think about where i might be this time next year and all the settling and firming up of these subtle changes combined with new ones, i can't even see yet...well, i get a little overwhelmed - one of those mixtures of antsy excitement with a dash of deep dread, if you know what i mean.

all this to say - the point finally - is that while it's easy to get caught up in the varied myriad of memories, i seek to simply hold them, draw them into me, and look forward - with eyes clear and calm - toward the future.

camp reflections

its a cloudy, chilly night in san diego, and i'm back in the little blue house on oliphant street after a roller-coaster week out of the blue.

within the first week or so of being here, the chance to work as a counselor at a church camp in northern california. time went by, and with no response from the coordinator, the whole prospect got conveniently shelved somewhere behind putting in a garden, biking to the grocery store, and all the other random tidbits of life.

two wednesdays ago, however, the phone rang, plans were laid, and suddenly saturday morning at 6 am, heidi and i found ourselves waiting around on the point loma campus ready to load up and move out. the destination: eureka, ca and the blue slide mid-high teen church camp. fifteen hours of driving later, which included an hour and a half of circling sacramento thanks to an unexpected highway closure and an overnight stay in yuba city at the home of one of the most hospitable older couples i've ever met, we found ourselves at the edge of the pacific northwest - the palms replaced by pines, the cliffs and waves replaced by mountains and rivers, and the cloudless skies filled with the low, grey clouds that make greens that much greener and the blues that much bluer.

monday morning came, staff met, campers arrived, and camp ensued. stories upon stories could be told about the girls in my cabin (hailey, elizabeth, mariah, sarah, haley, and laura) or the awesome kids on my red team (sam, natalie, thomas, jordan, allison, kendra, and kaitlin) or the staff who, daily, exemplified god's unfailing love. days filled with dodgeball, arts and crafts, archery, swimming in the river, chapel times, and campfires.

but what i wanted to write about tonight, as i catch up on emails and stream the results from "so you think you can dance" on heidi's computer, was how incredibly touched i was by the reality of the lives of my campers. smack in the middle of humboldt county - a center of alcoholism, methamphetamine abuse, and marijuana use - the kids represented at camp were riddled with the after effects of these destructive habits, torn to pieces by abandonment, divorce, and the painful wounds they cause. out of the six girls in my cabin, not one of them did not carry the scars of the hate, anger, and despair embodied within parental fighting, divorce, peer rejection and the even more powerfully impactful abandonment and the foster system.

in reaching out to these little ones, proclaiming god's unconditional love and his everlasting faithfulness, the conventional words of comfort turned to ash in my mouth, and the tears shed in private were bitter, indeed. but in living through that challenge, i discovered buried somewhere deep within, a steel-like fiber of strength that i didn't even really know existed.

and now, as night has fallen a state's length away from my little dears and the episode currently streaming comes to an end, with the idea of catching up on some much-needed sleep looms to the forefront of my mind, all i can do is to surrender those lives to the creator which breathed them into being and remind my ownself of the words i offered them so often: god is faithful.