Amid all the events of November and December, I forgot to tell you all that back in October, a lady named Kayleigh Wood came to my college and recruited me to work for the summer as a counselor at Truett Baptist Camp in Hayesville, North Carolina.
I’ve been here for five weeks now, and I have five weeks left. And now, I’d like to tell you about what I’ve learned and experienced here at Truett.
Déjà Vu
God lays on people’s hearts what His will is for them, but many times they cannot fully see it. Instead, they follow obediently in faith. Many times, we are led one step at a time, only to wake up or arrive one day and realize how perfect His plan was the whole time.
Déjà vu is the feeling that a person remembers a situation or experience occurring in the same way before the present moment in time. I have noticed, however, that I experience déjà vu much more at times in my life where I settle into the place God wants me to be. So I wonder, honestly, if déjà vu is the feeling where we experience a moment, whether it be an important one or a meaningless one, that falls along the path that God had on our hearts all along, that He had planned for us. Maybe déjà vu is not merely an illusion of having experienced something before. Perhaps, it is rather a recollection of something that God had laid on our hearts before, but that we had only come to fully understand in that moment.
Perhaps, it is God’s way of saying You’re doing well, my child. Keep going. I’m right here with you.
Direction Without Destination
One thing that has concerned me in the past, and that I often thought concerned my dad as well, was the fact that I was in college, pursuing a specific major, but had not even a vague idea of what career path I would pursue upon graduation.
On top of that, I have been very determined to finish college despite having no specific career goals that depended on it. Yes, I know that college helps in the general acquisition of a job, but you have to find one for it to work.
And then this summer, coming to work at Truett was for a few reasons not necessarily the best of decisions in the practical ways.
Financially, it brings much less money than I could make at a traditional, full-time job working the same ten weeks as I am spending here, and therefore is not the wisest way to aim toward being able to pay for college.
Logistically, it places me away from home with no way to get there except in emergencies, and thus no way to see my friend Gabriel, whom I also miss more than I can express.
Mentally, the job places me in a position where, if I find myself overwhelmed with struggles of this type, it can impact coworkers as well as summer campers, which can produce an unthinkable outcome. This was a concern that my dad had right before I left because I reached a very low point about a week earlier.
And I am away from everyone I know and don’t have much opportunity to communicate with them due to the duties of camp life.
In both of these situations, college and camp, I’ve pursued them because I felt that it was where God was calling me. I often doubted, of course, and felt hopeless. But once I finally trusted and took the step forward, I found that God started making everything work out.
The same feeling that compelled me to come to Truett is keeping me from telling everyone that I’ll be back next summer as well. As much as I initially wanted to say yes, of course, I’d be back, the hesitation that hindered my answer to that question the first time I heard it was turned into more of a knowing that this is where God has me now, but that He may have something else in store for me next year.
And now I’ve come to understand, as I talk to people, and as I think and pry about it more, that this seemingly random and unguided course of my life is actually following the path along which God is using me. If I keep following that little guiding voice, I’ll end up right where He wants me.
You’ve already heard how that worked out in my coming to Bryan. But I haven’t had the chance to tell you that when I came to Truett, there was no way I would be able to afford to return to Bryan as a residential student. This was part of the reason why I was concerned about coming to Truett as opposed to taking a higher-paying job.
After I got to Truett, the financial and mental factors I mentioned earlier were major considerations in the fact that I was very tempted to leave early and go home.
But then one of my campers told me something one night that made me decide that I was going to stay right where I was. In fact, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea at all.
Maybe the money wasn’t there, but I already had a clear and workable option where I could commute with Gabriel—who would be commuting anyway—and stay at home. I could still be a part of campus life as I had been, and I would be able to afford it much more easily.
Maybe I would have struggles, but God had already been helping me through, and He would definitely continue to do so.
That weekend, a few very minor things changed, and so I did all of the numbers again just to see what everything looked like.
And somehow, everything added up to put me back on campus for at least another semester.
That night, after I decided to take that opportunity, go back on campus for the fall, and let spring take care of itself, I had another one of those déjà vu moments.
Rocks
Despite the consternation and some struggles, I have had a wonderful time here at camp. I have been able to make awesome connections with the campers. As much as I am able, I have had the opportunity to embody the love of God in the way I interact with them. I’ve had a lot of fun with the staff as well as with campers, most importantly I had the unspeakable joy of having a camper surrender his life to Christ as I prayed with him.
God has used me in the lives of people who have come through this camp, and I’m certain that He will continue to do so in the weeks to come. In many cases, it’s been in the most minuscule and seemingly meaningless things, but I’m about to tell you a story about how I learned yet again how these are often the most important things.
This past Thursday, I went whitewater rafting with 80 campers from the first of our three Youth Camps. There is a place at the orientation area where a bunch of picnic tables are set under a pavilion, and the ground is made up of that dark brown gravel that you see at playgrounds.
As we were waiting, our camp director picked up a handful of those rocks and handed them to me, saying “don’t say I never gave you anything.”
I am certain that he expected me to do what most people probably would have done: drop those rocks and go about my life. But for some reason, I kept them and put them in my shorts pocket, forgetting about them soon after.
I didn’t remember them again until we had gone through about half of the rafting trip and came to a place where our guide jumped into a very calm part of the water, encouraging us to feel free to do the same. The rocks crossed my mind as I landed in the water, and I figured that they would all have fallen out.
But when we landed and got back on the bus, all of the rocks were still in my pocket and became one of the most meaningful souvenirs I had ever owned.
Sometimes, God is like that. He’ll give us something so small and meaningless. And so often, we let it slip through our fingers, seeing no value to it. But if we hold on to it and remember it, He’ll eventually use it and turn it into something so meaningful and wonderful that we’ll find ourselves marveling yet again at how perfectly His plans and His provision come together for us.
And that’s how my life is being used.
A handful of rocks at a time.