May I rant? Oh please oh please?
All I heard the entire two hours driving back from camp (with two other people in the car, too) was how wonderful life was at home without Tegan and I. How the house stayed clean (that’s debatable), about how Mom didn’t have any “anger problems” whhile we were gone (which is not what I heard) and about how Dad had less headaches (whoopie). Life without Melanie and Tegan was apparently wonderful. And that’s all we heard for two hours, taking our “camp high” and stomping it into the ground.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, life has been absolutely miserable this week. No matter what I choose, it’s the wrong choice. For example (petty as it may sound): Every morning, we empty the dishwasher and get it running again. At the same time, Mom (every morning without fail) wants to cook her eggs for breakfast. And every morning, we get in each other’s way and Mom explodes. And so we try doing the dishwasher earlier; Mom gets hungry earlier. We try waiting the dishwasher an extra ten minutes while Mom gets her eggs… and then we’re such terrible slackers, totally taking advantage of Mom’s every move, using her as an excuse not to get chores done, making her into the bad guy, or whatever the catch phrase for the week happens to be. So either way, whatever I choose, it’s the wrong choice. Without fail.
It’s summer vacation. I just graduated high school, I’m getting ready for college… and every other girl across the country in the same shoes is having a good time this summer. A little R and R before they begin the college grind. For me? Not so. If I sit down for a few minutes to read a chapter out of my library book, they demand to know what I’m doing and proceed to invent some chore or another because I should be “doing something.” If I sit down at my computer and want to mess around with graphics for a little bit, they threaten to take away my computer, or at least my internet time.
That’s another thing: internet time. It’s severely restricted. At least they haven’t gotten to the “plugged for enough time to download mail” point yet, but I only get about an hour and a half every day. And since I’m at home all week except for services Friday night, that’s my social time. That’s my research time, that’s my production time. I have friendships that need to be maintained in that hour and a half, things I need to look up, sites and forums that need to be kept up with. Yeah, it’s the internet life I choose, and it can’t always be done in the hour and a half that comes “after bedtime.” And they constantly want to take that away.
Dad’s convinced I’m going to fail out of college. Thanks for the support, Dad. Anyone who truly knows me knows that I operate best under pressure. That’s why I’m a procrastinator. It’s not really because I’m lazy, it’s because my best work comes out at the last minute. When it’s down to the line and I still want things to be perfect. Yeah, I realize that’s not smart and I’m working on it, but that’s the way I operate. I have to know what’s going on ahead of time (that’s why I hate surprises) and how everything is going to work. I’m a total melancholic; everything has to be worried over and analyzed, whether it happens or not. In this unstructured world of homeschooling, I’m dying. I can’t function, and it looks like I’m slacking. I’m totally not, but with how everything just… happens… I can’t function. College will be wonderful: a tight schedule and important deadlines once again. But because I lost track of time this afternoon, Dad thinks I’m going to fail college.
Oh, and that’s the other thing. Mel’s too much of a slacker to get a job. So not true! At this point, can you see me getting a job? First of all, I’d have to quit in a month. Second of all, how am I going to get there? We have one family car which Dad has to take to work every day since his motercycle broke down completely. There is one reasonable job within walking distance, yes, working at the Citgo up the street… but in order to apply for the job you have to go to the main Citgo at the other end of town in the middle of the day Tuesday. And I can’t get there. There is one other place I could go, if I rode with Lisa which she totally said I could, and that’s the outreach thrift store in Norman. I asked about working there; they said they don’t need me. There’s not enough work. Yeah, so that’s why Lisa HAS to work full time now (they just needed her so bad), that’s why Cassandra can’t quit, and that’s why thirteen-year-old Sarah gets to work there. Hello? Thirteen year old girls don’t need jobs. Girls who are trying to get college taken care of totally do. But hey, they don’t need my help.
My entire life is on hold right now, waiting for my grandfather to get funds released and a car driven down. While everyone else is taking off, I’m stuck here at home, getting yelled at for no reason, getting judged on circumstantial evidence, so on and so forth.
Posted July 20th, 2005 at 11:08pm (4 years, 7 months ago.)
Filed under
General Updates
//EDIT//
Okay, so I haven’t gotten my pictures developed yet, but Eliyah posted a picture of our tribe… so do you mind if I post it, girl?
>> click here
(I’m the gal in the purple shirt)
(did anyone get Sady’s email address? pretty please could I have it?)
//
Camp Yeshua, how do you feel?
I FEEL GOOD! OH! I FEEL SO GOOD! OH OH! I FEEL SO OH I FEEL SO OH I FEEL SO GOOD! OH! OH! OH!!
Couldn’t resist.
So the camp experience really started last Saturday for me, driving out to the Judah’s house to pick up James and Johanna, who we were hosting. It’s a bit awkward at first, when you know the person online but have never met them in real life, but let me tell you, they are such awesome people that the ice pretty much broke when we got home. We ended up gabbing for a while, James showed me some awesome pictures from his trip to Israel (hey, Jimmie Joe, leave me the link? I want to save some of those!), we ate dinner outside and got eaten alive…
And then they showed me the laughing cat.
Okay, so you have to see the cat to understand the joke, so click here. Half the joke is that it looks like my little Tia of course, but my goodness, reports say that I was literally rolling when they showed this to me. I just remember not being able to breathe. Well, it got to the point where all they’d have to do is snort and I’d be off again. Which they did. All week.
Anyhow, we watched independence day and stayed up kind of late, and then I personally did not get to sleep for a few more hours. I was praying for a lot of things: for camp, for certain friendships, for focus, and for certain issues to be resolved. Needless to say, I probably did not fall asleep that night until two or three in the morning.
And then I awoke to overhear plans to sneak into my bedroom and turn on that darn laughing cat.
I need to move on, I haven’t even gotten to camp yet! We got up, doodled around impatiently for a while, had lunch, and then loaded in the Bates’ van with Caleb, Garrison (the guy he was hosting), Tegan, Johanna, Jimmie Joe, and myself.
We made it to camp before the buses and got to meet up with some of the people who were already there, including Ashley, Rachel, and Greg (hi, guys!). Probably about twenty minutes after we got there, the buses pulled in, and that’s when all of the real fun started… all of the hugs and reunions with people you haven’t seen since sukkot or even last year’s camp. And then we all trooped into our dorms/cabins.
I was in Pennington, which is known as the really nice one. Well, downstairs is really nice. All the bunks are in a row, and then along the other wall there are almost these little closet things, where there’s a dresser and a place to put things. My goodness! But there was only room for twenty-four girls in there, so twelve of us got sent upstairs to “upstairs Pennington”. This room was barely big enough for six bunk beds along both walls, not sticking out but against the wall, with just enough room in the middle to walk through. But it was really nice because we had twelve girls and two showers all to ourselves… I swear, the bathroom was bigger than the room itself! I got to stay with Becky and Lisa, two of my most favorite people in the whole world, and I got to meet some awesome girls too. Imagine this: twelve girls in one room, and in these twelve girls there are three Jessicas, two sets of siblings, and a Becca and a Becky. Crazy!
Sunday was an okay day. I mean, it was awesome getting to see Canada again (Jen-less and Allan-less, of course! *sniff*), getting to see other friends from the past two years and all… but because of something that happened over the past year, there was a certain degree of awkwardness that first day… and it had me so tied up in knots that first night that I felt like I was going to pass out during evening worship. I could not focus, I could not think… and I was stuck there in the middle circle while they messed with electric guitars during dance with me.
And of course, starlight dance began that night, which is probably the most awesome experience during camp, at least for me. I mean, it’s one thing to worship in a large multi-purpose garage type building with awesome music, but it’s completely another thing to be out in the middle of nowhere, truly, with His creation all around you and millions of stars in the sky, worshipping there in the dark where you don’t care what you look like, who’s looking at you, and what steps you get or mess up. It’s just you and Him that night.
That night, in the cabin, after we got girls calmed down and lights out, I layed in bed forever, once again, just praying and trying to figure things out. I mean, if I’m feeling physically sick in the middle of evening worship, then my focus is NOT where it should be. And that’s something I’ve been learning since about December… where your focus needs to be and why you need to keep it there. More specifically, my focus as an eighteen year old girl should not be on this guy or that, but on Him, “my love, my fair one”. Focus was the word of the week for me, because even though I learned this past year about where and when to keep my focus, it really was put to the test this week at camp. And I admit, I failed sunday night, and I knew it. And so I prayed about it again and finally went to sleep.
The next morning at breakfast, it began to resolve itself, and I will tell you now that by the end of the week two things had happened, in my opinion. One, that a broken friendship had been restored, and two, that I became the most focused on Him than I have ever been in my life.
Encounter time in the morning was incredible. Basically, we met in the (west?) chapel in the morning, said some traditional prayers, had a few words from Bill, and then had fifteen to twenty minutes just to spend with you and the Lord. It’s a great way to start the morning, and it’s really inspired me to keep it up for the rest of the year.
After encounter time, we had our tribal conferences. Okay, let me back up for you non-campers. We had enough kids this year to split into twelve groups of thirteen to sixteen, and so they were the twelve tribes of Israel. Also, there were four “camps”, depending on where the tribes were camped around the tabernacle in the wilderness. I was part of Simeon, also known as Cinnamon, and then part of the camp of Reuben (Hill! Remember VBS, when you and I totally lead Reuben? Yess!). Red armbands for us. So every morning our group met on the rocks overlooking the entire valley and had some sort of group discussion. Mr. Frostad was our tribe leader, and he is just an awesome guy (eh?). We had some great group discussions about becoming One in Messiah (the theme of this year’s camp), one with our future spouse, the cost of following Him, et cetera and so forth.
Each tribe also had a plain canvas banner and a bunch of acrylic paint, and we had to come up with a banner for our tribe. Simeon’s was not too bad. We had the city of Shechem in the middle of ours, with a wall around the outside and a menorah made of hebrew letters at the top. Okay, I will post pictures, I promise!. But the best part was Luke’s stick guy. He should have won it for us!
Lunch came and went, and then we usually had some sort of recreation time, playing Brentball, swimming, or whatever. I think the best part of the afternoon were the sessions you signed up for. All three days I went to Ann’s advanced dance class. I had wanted to get some teachings in because I’m HERE now, I can dance whenever I want… but I was having a lot of back problems this week, so sitting somewhere in the heat on a wooden bench learning Hebrew just didn’t measure up to the possibility of some awesome worship time. Worshipping Him totally makes me forget about all of the aches and pains, as it should. The second day of advanced dance, Ann put on Paul Wilbur’s “Adonai”… and if you have access to that song, put it on. It gives you goosebumps, it’s such an incredible worship song. But Ann really felt let to put it on at the end of class that day because she and Stephanie had the verses choreographed, but not the chorus and the part at the end.
So she put it on for us, and it really is such an amazing song. We listened through, and I was in the corner with my eyes closed, just listening. I didn’t even know at that point what Ann already had for the verse, but every time the chorus came through… well, the weirdest thing happened. It wasn’t like I was *seeing* anything, per se, but I honestly was either seeing or feeling a certain thing when the chorus was on. And I had steps to it then, and I truly believe that He gave them to me and that, for the first time, I was open enough that day to actually hear His words. And after we spent about fifteen minutes doodling around with what to do with the chorus, with nothing truly feeling right, I finally got up the nerve to show Ann… and we tried it once through and it just… fit. And so that was the dance you were all doing out under the stars from that night on. I truly believe that, like dance with me, that song was choreographed by Him alone, and I was so excited to be a part of that!
Dinner, like lunch, came and went, and then we all trooped down to the Tabernacle for evening services. Our worship leader who was supposed to be out this week lives in Florida, and when his house got hit by the hurricane, he couldn’t make it to Oklahoma. We had Rod and the team two nights, Brad Scott another night… but I am really so proud of my fellow campers, because on Wednesday night, they totally pulled together with a bunch of people they had never met before and we had an awesome time of worship that night. I wasn’t even aware of all the frustration involved with that until I read James’ site this morning, and… wow, I just can’t believe how well that all pulled together.
We had a teaching, of course, some of which stood out more than the others. I have three favorites, honestly. I absolutely LOVED the object lesson that Bill gave with the baseball game and the ticket that Yeshua has given to us… and I also really loved Monte’s description about how your body, heart, soul, spirit, and might all work together to form one body. Who couldn’t love those five guys up there totally being the crazy, awesome people they are?
And I think my favorite, honestly, was Brad Scott’s personality teaching. I had never heard it taught that way before. I mean, I’ve done personality tests before and never had them really turn out right. (By the way, I’ve been all over Brad’s website and can’t find the actual test, so if someone knows what the www is…). Anyhow, I found this quite interesting and it told me a lot about myself and others. Here’s just a quick rundown, in case you find this as interesting as I do:
Sanguine: forgetful, enthusiastic, lives for the moment, extrovert, outgoing, etc
Choleric: leader, perfectionist, everything has to be in order, controlling, etc
Phlegmatic: doesn’t care, introvert… well, just doesn’t care
Melancholic: “you have a headache? I have CANCER.” (which is totally now my new response to “I have a headache”… “I have CANCER”…)
Sanguines should marry Melancholics and Cholerics should marry Phlegmatics, which makes perfect sense. I haven’t taken the actual test online because I can’t find the www, but I’ve decided that I’m mostly melancholic (which is more than having cancer, it’s also that we worry a lot about things that don’t end up happening, we’re introverted, we have musical talent (pfff), we like to study, etc), with a little bit of sanguine. And so I have to marry someone who’s mostly sanguine but who can be melancholic. It’s funny, but those are the kinds of people I look for anyway!!
Enough about that.
So that’s the basic outline of every day, and there are some events that really stood out to me, some of which I already mentioned. First I have to tell you about our act for talent night. Have any of you heard Nicole C. Mullen’s “Freedom”? (Hill! Freedom!) Well, just a few days before camp I was messing around with choreography in the driveway… had some basics together but no chorus, nothing for this verse or that, etc. Well, I kind of decided midway through camp, I believe it was Wednesday, during signups for talent night, which only had limited spots, to turn on the music and just show Lisa what I had so far. Well, she helped me with the rest of the choreography process (and she says she doesn’t do that… pfff…), and before I knew it, we had six people total who were going to be in the dance: Tegan, Caleb, Lisa, Becky, Robby and I. Tegan had seen me mess around with choreography, Lisa had seen it but hadn’t really tried it yet, Caleb and Becky had heard the song but hadn’t seen the dance, and Robby hadn’t even heard the song before. We ended up signing up as first alternate, in case someone dropped out. As of lunchtime Thursday, I was the only one certain of the dance. While everyone was on the slip-n-slide that day, we met in Pennington Lodge and I taught the dance. And the five people who picked it up so fast, I hope He blesses your socks off for that!!
We had to meet over in the dining hall to confirm being in talent night and bring any CD’s we needed over to Bill… and it was the same little chunk of free time we had to get all nice for dress-up night. On the way down, we met Jill, who was supposed to play the piano but didn’t feel prepared for it and really just wanted to go get ready for that night, so she told us to tell Bill to just scratch her name off. As first alternate, we couldn’t agree more. Well, we talked to Bill and he said that we were still alternate, because we were limited as to time and many people didn’t know exactly how long their skits were. If there was time, he said, we’d be the second to last act.
You know what? There was time!
And so we totally got up in front of everyone after learning the dance just a few hours before, and we did FREEDOM! With minimal mess-ups! Lin said that she got two pieces of the dance on her camera, so maybe they’ll be out with the camp CD, but I do know that Cassandra got all of our dance on HER camera… so I’ll work on getting it from her and then finding somewhere to upload it online so you all can see it. I am so proud of it, first of all, and proud that I didn’t get stage fright. Instead, I totally turned into a sanguine and got INTO it!
The other big big event was Thursday night after the starlight dance. Usually we end out on “Dance with Me” and split up quietly into our tribes so that we can end the night in prayer and go to bed. However, Thursday night, everyone just kind of gathered into the middle of the field, almost as if it was a giant group hug. And people started singing “Hallelujah” over and over again, and it was just so beautiful. Guys, I seriously can’t even begin to describe it… those that were there know how that is… but it was just one of those total and complete GOD moments that you’ll remember for as long as you live. Everyone had their arms around everyone, and people were singing, crying, praying… I remember crying at the beautifulness and the ONEness of it all, like we truly had become ONE IN MESSIAH that night… I remember just looking up at the stars and feeling closer to Him than I have in such a long time… and then I remember being so filled with joy that I just wanted to hug everyone all at once, wanted to jump up and down praising Him will all of my everything… and then it was all over and it was getting close to two in the morning. I will never be able to to describe it, but because of that night I feel as if I am on fire for Him once again, ready to live for him every day.
As soon as I get my pictures developed I’ll get them up here, and I have some pictures I took for other people so I’ll have them here too.
WHAT A WONDERFUL WEEK!
//EDIT//
I just started a Camp Yeshua blogring (oooh, aren’t I cool? Not.) Please join if you were there and invite anyone else you know that was there, please oh please! I personally didn’t get a lot of addresses this year at camp, so let’s try to get as many people in this as we can, okay?
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Posted July 16th, 2005 at 2:12pm (4 years, 7 months ago.)
Filed under
General Updates
Tegan and Mom and I watched a movie called “Kate and Leopold” this afternoon… and I just LOVED it. If you haven’t seen it, the basic storyline is about the Duke of Albany coming out of the year 1876 in New York City and ending up in New York City, year 2001. The duke, Leopold, is this old fashioned, nineteenth century gentleman, and he ends up meeting this girl named Kate, who is a tough businesswoman, very modern, etc. And it just amazes me how much guys USED to be gentlemen without even THINKING about it! I mean, kudos to the guys at camp, but this is like, twenty-four seven, all of the time. They stood when a lady got up from the table, they ALWAYS opened doors and pulled out chairs, they always “stated their intentions in writing” before courting (ahh, so nice to hear that word outside of our small Messianic circle!!), they asked the father, or if he wasn’t available, the brother, for permission to court… my GOODNESS, sometimes I wish we could go back. Mom and I were joking around, saying that we were going to import young men from 1876 from the Jewish section of the city… LOL!
Other than that, (*sigh*), normal day. Mom actually remembered to let me drive to the library this time, and I angle-parked twice without killing anyone. Just slightly off. And after I angle parked outside of the supermarket and Mom went inside, it all hit me. About how, this time next month, I’m going to be a full-time college student. By this time next month I will have had my liscense for at LEAST a week (and now, I’m not quite sure if it’s possible… learning to drive when you’re a perfectionist is TOUGH.)… I still have to get my funds from my grandfather and get him to bring the car down… and then it hit me even more, if that’s possible. I mean, the first year of my college life I will have my trust fund to carry me… a car that my grandfather is giving me along with insuring for a year… so a year from now, I’m going to be dealing with funds for college as well as picking up the insurance… all with a part-time job while I push my way through college…
I don’t know if I told you about a dream I had a little over a week ago, but the images really stuck with me. I mean, I only remember a brief moment of this dream, but as I said… it just hit home. I was standing at the edge of a cliff. Around me on this cliff were these huge rocks, almost like walls, and on these rocks there were posters. Posters, just, everywhere. Posters of rockstars, of high schools, of fashion trends, of guys, of girls, of… well, all of the “teenage” issues. Things that teenagers worry about. And I remember looking over the edge of this cliff. Down below, SO far down that to fall down would seriously injure you at the very least, I remember seeing the golden arches waaaay down there through the mist. And then, at the other end of this canyon or whatever it was, there was another cliff, lower down, and I could see billboards on the far side. Billboards of cars, of careers, of colleges, of families… all “adult” issues. If any of you have ever seen the movie “Bug’s Life”, it was a lot like the riverbed that Flik flew across on a dandelion seed. ‘Nough said.
And seriously, that’s all I remember, the setting, but it really really stuck with me. I take it as this flight I have to take, beginning from the cliff of being a teenager and ending up over in “adulthood”. And if I try to fly and fail, I’ll end up at the bottom of this ravine, populated (ironically) with burger-flipping college dropouts. And it’s this incredible feeling of having to fly, of having to TRY to glide across to the other side… and either I’ll fail and fall to the bottom, or I’ll be able to fly across.
And as I was drifting off to sleep the other night, a third alternative came to mind. That I could leap off with all of my might, glide as far as I can, and hope and trust that Someone will carry me on His wings to the far side.
Of course, that doesn’t sound very practical when faced with enrollment applications and housing options, but it’ll have to suffice. Because I know no knight in shining armor is going to come down with HIS glider and help me along. I’ve fairly given up on that, to be honest. I’ll just have to leap. And pray.
And so that’s the thoughts in my head today. Not really connected, unless you use your imagination. Humph.
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Posted July 5th, 2005 at 2:09pm (4 years, 8 months ago.)
Filed under
General Updates