After a 17-year hiatus, I have finally returned to camp . . . as a –gulp- counselor. It’s what I always dreamed of being as a camper. However, I didn’t dream of being one quite so old. I know that I’m not old. I don’t feel older than my co-counselors, not on the inside anyway. As it goes with my 90-to-nothing brain, I had a lot of anxiety about coming up here and being so much older than my, er, peers. The greatest anxiety being how I’d be perceived and received: “What’s the creepy old lady doing up here?” My fellow counselors have been AMAZING. So kind, so gracious, accepting and welcoming. I find myself among kindred spirits for certain and I did not expect that. God is good.
That said, being among those so young has brought other things to the surface. Questions, mostly. Questions I thought I’d put to rest. I am at a place in my life where I don’t have a lot of nagging regret about the past. I can look back and know that I did the best I could, given all variables. And because I know that God causes all things to work together for good, and because I am old enough to see what He has done with my wrongs, I am thankful for the path I’ve walked however bumpy it has been.
But . . .
Watching my new young friends just at the beginning of their lives has made me long for my younger youth once more. To be back at the beginning armed with the knowledge I have now (and by “knowledge” I mean what I know about myself). I know I would have made some different choices, but would I have been happier? Would my journey have been smoother? Where would I be at this particular moment in time? Would depression have taken the hold that it did? Would I be sitting in front of my computer asking these same questions from a different perspective? That has been the only true hard part about being here. Just when I think I’m past my tendencies of hyper-sentimentality and juvenile foolishness, they both sneak up and bite me on the butt.
It doesn’t really matter and I don’t spend time looking back anymore. My journey to this point was what it was. Kind of like this post, it is the musings of a momentarily wistful heart that remembers what life was like before it learned the lessons that only experience can teach. I chose my road, but God brought and continues to bring me where he wants me—thankfully, in spite of me.
