It’s almost my most favorite week of the year: Royal family kids camp.
So, of course there are about at least five new stressors that popped upon the last week. There is a hundred things I need to do in the next 12 days before I fly on a plane to California.
There’s curriculum to keep editing, lines to memorize, supplies to have sent to Irvine, packing list to make, super soakers to find. All the things.
And then there is me: not feeling holy enough.
I know that sounds like a weird sentence, but it’s absolutely the only word that comes to my brain.
At camp I get to one of my favorite things and that is simply this: remind kids again and again and again that they are loved. I teach bible stories and pass out prizes for memorizing bible verses.
But really what I’m doing is just reminding them each and every moment that they were born to be loved.
That there are people that love them and will show up for them, that pray for them and constantly think of them.
The weeks leading up to camp the last few years have been hard. I’ve lived life emotionally drained and have been trudging up hills and through muck. So, I find myself getting to the weeks before camp and staring at Bible curriculum and verses and thinking I am not at all in the heart space to the one up at front.
Camp is a tiring week. It’s sun-up to sun-down, walking up and down hills, engaging with kids and adults, getting in the pool, making crafts, trying my best to avoid woodworking but always seeing a kid who needs help and doing it anyway.
It’s a week where I feel like I’m utilizing all that I am and all I have to give and leaving up on the mountain.
But, in the midst of all of my doubts and all the ways I just feel incapable and stressed and everything in between I’m just hearing these simple words:
Just show up.
My word for the year is again. It’s not just a word but a fill in the blank that has found a way to maneuver into most aspects of my life.
So amended: just show up again.
Showing up to camp is a lot. It’s carrying the year prior on your back, it’s the ways you’ve changed and grown and been stretched. It’s carrying the things you’ve lost along the way and hoping you have enough to keep picking things up.
We all come to camp with different stories, just like the kids we spend the week. We come with different reasons why, with different pains, different things we bring to the table.
And we can prepare, we can make lists, we can do everything we can.
But, at the end of the day all we are asked to do is simple just show up again.
Show up for the kids.
Show up for each other.
Show up for ourselves.
That’s what I’m going to work on remember over the next 12 days amidst all the things. I just need to get on a plane and show up.
To my Royal Family, I can’t wait to see you so soon and hug you all.
I cannot wait til we can show up together again.
With love,
Meg
If you’d like to help us show up for the kids, you can head to our donate link to help send a kid to camp!
she writes on sundays 