The Mysteries of Life

From July 21-24 I went to "Girls' Camp" about an hour outside Baltimore. This is a camp program through our church that I attended in CA (although we went for a whole week and slept in tents and cooked a lot of our own food and went on real, overnight hikes...and hiked up hill, both ways, in the snow!). It is designed to allow young women 12-18 to learn some basic camping skills (first aid, campfire building and cooking, knots, hiking) and to get them out in nature, away from media and their everyday activities and their family and friends, and to provide them an opportunity to develop a closer relationship with God. I have wonderful memories of looking up at the stars, roasting s'mores, hiking with all of my supplies on my back, and really feeling a sense of awe at the beautiful world God created. I remember feeling so small and yet so special. One of the glorious, and kind of mysterious, paradoxes of this world.


So, now that I am an adult (I know, I sometimes don't act like one, and sometimes I don't want to be one, but I am twice as old as many of these girls, so to them I am definitely an adult...no "age" comments, please, even though my b-day is fast approaching and it's a big one...I used to think '30' was really old, but really I feel like I'm in my prime...age and perspective, another mystery of life!) I attended camp as a leader and I spent three nights in a cabin with 13 teenage girls and one other leader. It was a blast being with these amazing young women out of our regular element. I was exhausted and SO excited to come home to my shower, bed, and husband, not in that order, of course :)


The pic at the top of this post is another one of those mysteries of life: the women's bathroom in the dining hall at camp had two toilets, side by side, in one room. I still can't make sense of it!

This last week we had a lot of rain that changed some of our plans. Brandon's softball games got rained out, but part way through, so he still got a chance to play and get all muddy! We attempted to explore some local culture and go to a Friday night concert around the corner from us, but it had been canceled due to rain so we ate our dinner and watched people instead. I wish I could say that my friend, Kim, missing her plane flight was because of rain, but it wasn't-- we just weren't watching the time-- so, we had an unexpected overnight guest on Wednesday night. The rain, however, did not keep us from exploring a state park about 30 minutes away on Saturday, and we got to enjoy some "beach" time on the Bay.
Hope you all are having a nice summer! We head to Utah this coming week and will blog about our travels when we get back mid-August...so please stay tuned.