[p o e t r y]

Camp Barnabas

Bruises and scrapes
Freckle my body

Cuts pepper
my feet, my legs, and my hands

Today I've been drooled on
And I've been hit

I held the hand of a girl
Who threatened to hurt me

Last week
I cleaned vomit
Off the back of a toilet
And bit my cheeks three times
To keep my own vomit down

And yet...
I have never been
In a place as beautiful as this

The scrapes, the bruises
The threats, the hurts
Even the vomit and the drool
Are so incredibly and undeniably worth it

Because this place is more beautiful
Than all my other life

We labor in Christ here
And we support each other in love
We talk till late in the evening
And cry with laughter

We ask hard questions
And check in on one another

We lead
And we follow
And we love so much

The campers here
Are beautiful beyond words

Even when they hit you,
You can't help but love them
Because they way God created them
Is so uniquely wonderful

True, they cannot always
Communicate in a way that makes sense
To me,
But they love SO purely
And they experience joy
So throughly

One told me,
"You look gorgeous like a butterfly"

One asked me
If she was hurting me
When she squeezed my hand
Because even though
She had threatened me
Minutes before
She didn't mean it
She was just scared
And she didn't know how to say that
But she never wanted to hurt me
She truly cared

I watched a boy
Almost knock another off a cliff
Because he ran with such force
When he won an award
That he just HAD to hug someone
So tightly they fell

True, hardship here
Is inescapable, 
But the joy and the love here
Are so much more
Beautifully
And uniquely
Inescapable and encompassing

(06/23/22)