C IS FOR COUNSELOR

The summer before seventh grade I went to Pioneer Girl's Camp for the first time.  Pioneer Girls is a Christian organization run through your local church.  During the year, the group meets weekly.  They have a camp somewhere in your state that your child can attend for a week (or more).  The boys have a similar organization, and used the same camp for the first part of the summer for five weeks, and then the girls got the camp for five weeks. 

I loved it. 

I went back to camp every summer for an increasing number of weeks each summer.  I even joined their 2-year CILT program (Counselor in Leadership Training).  It is a rigorous training program that requires a lot of time during the year fulfilling requirements to complete the program, as well as a lot of time during the weeks at camp.  That first year of CILT, I stayed four weeks at camp.  I spent two weeks fairly immersed in CILT stuff.  The second two weeks I was free to just be a camper again.   Whee.

I was completely unprepared for what happened that next summer.  I should have been ready, but I was NOT.   It just didn't occur to me until I got to camp that after the two weeks of the CILT program, THAT WAS IT.  We would have this big ceremony and then I would be a counselor.  There would be no more fun weeks of being a camper *ever again.* 

Every year there is a Theme Song that we sing as much as possible in an effort to remember it.  I must admit that year's song is the only one I remember.  The chorus went something like this, "Mmmm I want to linger, Mmmm a little longer, Mmm a little longer here with you..." I cried through the whole thing every time we sang it.  It was a waterworks show.  In fact, my tear ducts were always on a short trigger.  As graduation approached, I knew I didn't want to graduate.  I didn't want to grow up.  I didn't want to be the adult.  I didn't want to leave childhood behind.  I could see it rapidly approaching and I just wasn't ready to give it up.... yet.

There are people who go through life and have this big mid-life crisis because they don't know what happened.  Their youth somehow slipped by them without them even knowing.  I always knew that would NEVER happen to me.  I knew precisely when my youth got left in the dust.  It was the summer of 1985.  It didn't go easy, either.  I like to think I was a caterpillar before that summer.  That summer was my chrysalis.  And fighting your way out of one those things isn't remotely pretty.  It is a lot of kicking, crying, screaming, frustration, and exhaustion.  All the while you know something has died.  You don't feel the same, and you are mourning that caterpillar.  Meanwhile, you have no idea what you will look like when you finally get out of what feels like a Death Trap.  It's hard being caught in the In Between Places. 

It's only after it is all over that you see things for what they are.  See you for what you are.  It's something of a shock when it's all over.  You don't even recognize yourself.  Who is that?  I don't know that being.  But, it is me and it's okay.  Better than okay.   I'm a butterfly.

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:"    Ecclesiastes 3:1

image found at www.weheartit.com 


Did you have a defining moment or experience that marked your passage from childhood to adulthood?  Have you had clarity about realizing your days of childhood have passed you by and you are now officially an adult?  How did that happen?  Did you ever go to summer camp?  Was that a wonderful or terrible experience?