A Cry in the Night

My guitar is getting some good use: around campfires,
on sleep-outs, waking up campers in the morning...

Thunk.

My hand, barely visible in the darkness, contacted the rough wood-paneled wall. Floundering its way to the left, the hand struck a new surface--one with some give to it.

Ah, the door.

"I--need--to--use--the--wah-shroom!" A small voice beside me whimpered through the blackness.

"We're getting there," I assured her. If only I 
could find the knob!

(It keeps going! Please click "Read More.")



I could have brought a flashlight. But seeing as how the bathroom door hung so near my bunk that I might have opened it without leaving my sleeping bag, I'd overestimated my night-vision competence and left it behind.

FLASH!

Light overwhelmed the sleeping cabin, causing me to panickingly relocate the ill-swatted light switch. The door, find the door!

"Can you open it?" The small voice eventually questioned.

"Ye-ah," I insisted, perhaps a smidgen too emphatically. This was getting ridiculous. Ah, but here was the knob. Now where did those light switches go...

BOOM!

Not that one. I quickly flicked off the main cabin circuit--again. This one? No, that one didn't do anything. This last one? Finally, success.



　

Welcome to the first of three nights belonging to the six-to-seven-year-olds' camp. The other two nights were not particularly restful either, but at least eight little munchkins can now go home with grand stories to tell about their adventures. Stories about hiking in the woods, being led about on horseback, picking wild berries, and a counselor named Candace (a mispronunciation of Tangent) who had someone or another perpetually clinging to her back. By the end of the week my dozing off in the lunch line prompted one child to look at me and declare, "She's tired. But I'm not!"

Not going to lie here: this week was tough. But despite everything, I can look back and know that at the end of the week eight little pairs of hands clutched eight brand-new Bibles. AND I can remember the words that I heard through a closing car door as the last camper said good-bye:

"Mommy, can we come back next year?"