COTW 2019 Week 1

I have decided to take a lesson from my good friend Bea and write an update every week of the summer for those of you back home.  To begin with, it was great to be back with Phil after such a long time apart.  It was also so good to spend the week with our son Will.  Will had spent a summer here back in 2011and has several friends here so it was good to keep up those connections.  Even though Will only lives about five minutes from us in Dunlap, we don't always get to spend the extended time together that leads to lots of good conversations.  When he left for home I felt tears come to my eyes and that surprised me.

Part of my week has been spent unpacking, deep cleaning the Loon's Nest (our cabin), and just generally getting settled back into the routine of camp.  I have helped out in the kitchen some, and been involved in some of the staff training that has been taking place this week for the young people who have come to be our summer staff.  It is a large group of nearly thirty young adults and teens, and I am excited to be able to work with them this summer.

Special dinner with staff topped off our week of training.

This special dinner was a true gift from the kitchen staff and leadership team.
I appreciated their thoughtfulness so much.

The thing that has struck me the most this week has been the relationships that have been begun or are being reestablished.  Let me just give you a snapshot of my Wednesday evening.

After chapel Will and I went to the Kanes' house (our friends who are here full time).  We spent about half an hour just talking about life.  I had noticed how content Billie seems to be here now, and she got to talk about how God was building patience into her life.  After that Will went and spent some time with their 19-year-old son, Alex, who is autistic.  I went to the lodge where I had a conversation about my mom's surgery with Seth, and then got to hear from a young man who is here as an intern about the difficulties of leaving his very tight-knit family.  Will ended up in a game of Aggravation so I went back to the cabin.  I ran into Shelby, who spent a couple of summers as our head life guard, and was just back for the evening to visit friends.  She brought Haley with her and these to girls visited with us for about thirty minutes, talking about what they are doing and what they hope to do in the future.

All these connections, all this time for talking and investing in each other is what makes my time at Camp of the Woods so special.  The connections here run deep and span a lot of time.  My life is so much richer because of all the relationships I have built during the past ten years of ministry at COTW.

Staff returning from outdoor chapel at Beartrack Lake.  Canoeing at
sunset is spectacular.

Prayer requests:

Please remember my mother who is having surgery on her nose on Monday to remove some skin cancer.  She has already had substantial work on her nose in the past and it has not been easy.

Pray for me as my biggest job this week will be to tell Bible stories on the morning hike.  Pray that I will have a clear message of how Jesus makes all difference in our lives and that following Him is the best path for your life.

Our key verse for the summer

Good in the World

Kids, grandkids and great-grandkids

Earlier this week our family gathered to celebrate Father's Day with my dad.  We had a good time together, and I enjoyed seeing all the faces at the table.  After the meal I said to Dad, "You have good kids, good grandkids, good great-grandkids. What a great thing!"

After coming home I thought some more about this comment.  Yes, my dad (and of course, my mom) has a lot of good people in his family-- four kids, eleven grandkids, and nine great-grandkids.  Dad's descendants are living or at work in far-flung places like Canada, Ukraine and Bulgaria, Georgia and Colorado, Florida and Indiana.  We also inhabit not so far-flung places like Dayton, Dunlap and Chattanooga. But all these good people are not just good people.  They are good people adding good to the world.

In some places they are preaching the Gospel and calling people to salvation.  In other places they are bettering the lives of people through education and health care. Others are ending the oppression of poverty and racial injustice in the lives of those they touch.  Many work in and through their churches to better their communities and share a portion of their income to support important work that they care about.

All this good has as its foundation the home my dad built with my mom.  They came together to make a home that honored Jesus Christ and nurtured us all to become the good people we are.  I'm so glad to be his daughter, and so pleased to be counted in the number of his descendants who are working every day to make this world a better place.

Life and Death Collide

Photo via Chattanooga Times Free Press

 My weekend took me to two very different events in the course of one day.  On Saturday afternoon I went to the funeral of Rachel Held Evans, and later on Saturday evening I attended the wedding of Autumn Cofield.

There’s no denying the fact that life and death walk alongside each other on the paths of our lives, but this weekend they collided and overlapped…

--In a father carrying his one-year-old daughter and holding the hand of his three-year-old son as they walked behind the casket of his wife and their mother; and in a father walking the bride down the aisle strewn with petals by the young flower girls.

--In a mother-of-the-bride who buried her mother on Monday and walked down her daughters’ wedding aisle on the arm of her widowed father on Saturday.

--In hearing a young woman give the eulogy at the funeral of her older sister; then hours later, hearing another young woman, who was the maid of honor, toast her just-wed sister at the reception.

Photo via Chattanooga Times Free Press

--In listening to my daughter sob for all the reasons she was sad at losing her friend; and later listening to the laughter of friends recounting good times with the bride and groom.

            --In grieving all that was lost in the death of Rachel, all that could have been, all that should have been; and in celebrating all the joy at the wedding of Autumn and Richard, and dreaming with them of all that has begun and is to come.

When we see this collision of life and death in the same space it is jarring.  Beautiful and terrible all at the same time.  I know that for Dan Evans, the reality jars him daily. Only days after Rachel’s passing, he hosted a birthday party for his sweet little girl, and that is but a single example of how death slaps you in the face, kicks you in the gut, over and over…and life goes on.  The words of poet Judah Halevi ring true in this space:

Tis a fearful thing

To love what death can touch.

A fearful thing

To love, to hope, to dream, 

To be, and O, to lose.

A thing for fools, this,

And a holy thing.

A holy thing… to love.

For your life has lived in me.

Your laugh once lifted me.

To remember this brings painful joy.

Tis a human thing, love,

A holy thing…

To love what death has touched.

Birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and graduations will mark the time and witness to the truth that life indeed does go on.  Autumn’s wedding attested to that fact.  My gift to her was a poem I wrote.  It is a snapshot in words of a time held dear, and a wish for a bright future with Richard.

A beautiful sunset,

Yellow, orange, red,

Still waters on the lake,

A loon calling mournfully to its mate,

Good friends gathered in a cozy cabin,

Fresh blueberry pie on my plate.

These were the elements

Of a perfect evening.

“It doesn’t get any better than this,”

I remember saying.

And then you entered the scene,

Sitting behind us

In the darkness that was slowly enfolding the cabin.

You played your cello.

For the next half hour

You transported us from the beautiful

To the sublime,

The transcendent.

It is one of my favorite memories.

I wish for you and Richard

Moments like this,

Memories like this,

Love like this.

Days like this remind me of a verse in Psalm 90 that says, “Teach us to number our days,” and a better translation might be “Teach us that our days are numbered.”  Rachel’s sister Amanda brought this home to us at the funeral by playing a beautiful song she wrote for her sister and never played it for her. She had no reason why except that she thought she had time. 

Yes, there is no doubt that life and death walk side by side in our lives, one taking the lead at times while the other lags behind, later to change positions.  This is the ebb and flow of life.