hope heals
Hi Joy-Crew!
I just got back from two weeks at one of my favorite places on earth, Hope Heals Camp. My family has been graciously accepted to attend this one-of-a-kind camp for the last 6 summers. It’s a camp tailor made for families experiencing disabilities. The spectrum of people attending is wide. Ages range from babies to adults. Parents, spouses, and grandparents all donning these titles + the title of caregiver. You can read more about the Hope Heals and how this camp came to be here.
It's hard to put into words the magic that happens at camp. This magic comes in the form of meeting other parents and caregivers who don’t need a long-winded explanation of what you are experiencing. Or when you meet other parents and medical professionals, and use words like “autosomal recessive” or “cerebellum” and no one blinks an eye because they know what it means. That Paxton, in all his wheelchair glory, can roll up on you, grab your name tag, ask you no less than 5 questions, and everyone is happy to answer, ignoring his broken speech, and the fact that he probably just ran into you shins with his chair.
The big question we always ask when we come home is, what did we learn? Here are a couple of things I took away as a camper/volunteer.
It’s ok to keep coming as a camper to receive the goodness that camp is and not volunteer. Hope Heals Camp is not transactional. My family attended 5 times before I volunteered. We needed that goodness and healing for a few years. We needed to learn the practice of receiving. Yes, receiving is a practice! I met so many people who when they heard I was a camper and stayed an extra week would say, “I want to do that next year!” Maybe their hearts are ready to hit send on that volunteer application. Mine sure wasn’t. Until it was.
We come to camp thinking it’s for a break from our daily life in disability, and it is. What we don’t realize is that we are sometimes met head on with unrealized grief from something entirely different. A trauma. A wound. The weariness of life. Something. But what is so spectacular is that God is there waiting for us. I hope that as many people as possible were able to leave some of that at His feet while they were at camp.
As a camper family, there were a lot of references to “shoulder up or shoulder down” places in life. For me, the minute I roll into camp my body posture goes into a shoulder down place. Cheers of excitement for your arrival start the minute you drive in and don’t stop till you drive out! As we head into the week and start listening to the messages so perfectly planned for us it’s hard not to see God’s goodness. His goodness is all around us at camp. It’s in the fresh flowers on every table, it’s the mints, chocolate and gum set out for us to always have, it’s the well spring of La Croix and hot coffee that never runs dry. It is in every conversation we have and every story we hear and share. His goodness is in our collective tears of grief and joy that we express in a space that feels safe to do so. Camp is a one-week pep rally getting everyone ready to go back into the playing field for another year. The playing field where there are no white flags to throw up. That if you are lucky, you have a few teammates nearby ready to sub in but overall, you are in it till the next year. Camp is like our one week off season. When we roll out of camp after a week of being loved so well there are always tears of sadness. My shoulders go back up and I’m back in the game. But I also go home knowing there is a camp in the middle of Alabama that was made just for my family. Filled to the brim of people who love me.
And that’s pretty special.
