On Our Way To Crazy

Hey internet! I’m still here! I went into camp planning and hibernation mode at the end of June and am just now digging my way out. Do you want to know about camp? How about seven things about camp?

I was really worried about camp this year. This year has been really rough on our group… we lost our meeting space, several key personalities graduated, the whole church moved into a building that had space for everyone to meet except the youth group. Morale has been down and I have been working ten times harder than I ever have in my life just trying to keep everyone together. We really needed camp to be a big week for us… not just spiritually but socially and emotionally. And it totally was. We had the most unexpected kids emerge as leaders and the most random pairs become good friends. I could not have asked for more.

I think every group thinks their group is the coolest group, but I think our group is actually the coolest group. I have never been around a funnier group of teenagers in all my youth working years. We have our own breakdancing team (with their own signature moves). We have group singalongs to Bohemian Rhapsody and original songs about showering with our clothes on. We have music videos. We take Miley Cyrus songs and change the lyrics so the song is about poop. I don’t even like poop jokes, but that song is hilarious.

This was our first year at an MFUGE camp, and I really loved it. It was an extremely packed schedule, but I never felt like we were doing things for no reason. Every day, from 10-3, the kids were out in the city of Birmingham doing service projects. They painted houses and schools, visited nursing homes, ran sports camps at the Y, served food in soup kitchens, delivered meals to homebound seniors, wrote skits and songs to perform and teach kids at VBS, fixed cars and did yardwork. And in the midst of all that work they built relationships with each other and with the people they were serving. They learned to see the poor and needy as people just like them.

Three hour van trips are way better than eight hour van trips. At least they are when you’re the driver.

Samford University is an amazing camp location. Everything is close together and totally walkable, the campus is beautiful, and the food is fantastic. Seriously. But the best part? The dorms. Each room had a living room/kitchen and two bedrooms with their own bathrooms to house four kids. Our living room became the party room, complete with streamers and balloons and popsicles at midnight. I can’t think of much of anything I would like to do more than girl talk in the party room every night when the day wraps up. You can learn a lot about inter-group dating when you play Never Have I Ever at 2am on an Otter Pop sugar high.

I am always a little wary of big, emotional camp experiences. I want kids to experience God in real and life-changing ways, but I worry about those experiences being atmosphere- and emotion-induced rather than real and honest responses. One night at camp the speaker did a pretty traditional invitation… prayed a prayer and then asked the kids who had prayed along with him to stand up. I was shocked, SHOCKED, to look up and see probably half of my group standing up.

But when we got to our church group room, it was full of dry eyes and focused kids. We started talking about what they were going through and thinking about and heard the same story over and over again: they’d had an experience in the past, been baptized, maybe had always gone to church because their parents made them or it’s just what you’re supposed to do. But they felt different now. Older, more mature, more independent. They wanted to make a new commitment and start to figure out a faith and a relationship with God that was theirs, that was real to them, not just something they did because it’s the right thing to do. Very even, very honest, very practical. Love.

I love camp. Camp is my favorite. It’s exhausting being the one who has to be up before everyone and go to bed after them, it’s an unbelievable amount of work in advance, I feel stress like I don’t feel at any other time while we’re at camp. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Getting to take 20 of my favorite kids in the world away for a week to learn, serve, play and just take a break from life is truly an honor. I am beyond grateful to get to do what I do.

Remember our crazy neighbor, the guy who grows corn in his front yard? Along with, we learned a while back, all kinds of assorted vegetables all around his house? We found out last week that one of our other neighbors is fed up with living in the middle of a farm and decided to do something about it. So they offered to pay corn-growing guy whatever amount of money he saves by growing his own food in exchange for him not making crop circles on the corner.

Corn-growing guy? Declined.

We leave for camp in fifteen days and I am seriously stressing out. I think God protects me from myself by making me forget how much freaking work goes into this business. I am really excited, though – we are going to a new place and taking a ton of new kids and I think it’s going to be great. I hope so, anyway. It’s been a rough year and we need something good and group-building to come our way.

I have recently developed an obsession with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I eat them all the time. I think it might be the stress. It’s hard to be stressed when you’re eating PB&J.

I had an imaginary friend when I was a kid. His name was Michael Jackson. I am unclear on whether or not my imaginary friend was ACTUALLY Michael Jackson or if that was just his name, but we spent a lot of time together.

It’s so weird to me that he has passed away. I was a huge fan in the 80′s. It’s such a weird dichotomy – how are we supposed to feel? Do you just celebrate the good and ignore the bad? That’s what I’m going with. He was an icon. He was a tragic figure. By the end he was a caricature of himself. But he gave us the moonwalk and Thriller and Rockin’ Robin. And for that I am grateful.

I’ve found myself with a new kind of youth dilemma these past few weeks – the graduates. Not what to do with them, exactly… we have a slowly developing college program and most of them are doing well wherever they are. But what is our relationship supposed to look like now? I can’t be the every day support I used to be. I have a new group and a whole different dynamic to manage now. But I don’t want to just disappear from their lives, either. The transition has been tougher than I expected and has created some definitely unnecessary drama. Ugh.

I have finally fully committed to the summer dress-wearing plan I have been trying so hard to implement over the past few years. The oppressive thousand-degree weather we’ve been having combined with some great sales has provided me all the motivation I need. Goodbye, jeans.

I want a boat. And a lake house. And a screened-in porch. And one of those floats that’s mesh in the middle so you can just kind of sit in the water. And then happiness will be mine.

In honor of the last day of National Poetry Month, which I really only know about because Kari is a good teacher, I wanted to post a couple of my favorites poems.

I’ve never been a great poetry reader… I like my poems to be easy and short and have a simple rhyme scheme. I’m super deep like that. But the ones I like, I like a lot. Here are two of my favorites:

i carry your heart with me by ee cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

I Am Vertical by Sylvia Plath

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one’s longevity and the other’s daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them –
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

Today is your lucky day, my friend. I have had an amazing string of good luck over the past few days, and I am going to share the wealth. Do you have a cause? Want a boat? Need some retirement funding? Have you been worried about how to make ends meet? Well, worry no more. I’ve got you covered. Get ready.

Since Thursday, I have been the recipient of the following:

• 3.75 million dollars, again from Ghana, this time from Dr. Korman Cofi, who doesn’t want a problem and is afraid I might have double mind;
• 12.5 million dollars from an international fund manager who is skimming the money off the top of his company’s profits and just needs my help to get the money into the U.S.;
• 891 thousand pounds from the United Kingdom National Lottery;
• in a strange coincidence, I won another 891 thousand pounds from a lottery done by the Camelot Group;
• 1.3 million dollars from the Foundation de France not only has a huge prize for me but can also hook me up with prizes fro my friends if I can get them the appropriate bank account info;
• 12.5 million dollars from Mr. John Mensah, the regional manager of a bank in Ghana because I am an honest, reliable and trustworthy person who is advanced in age;
• 8 million dollars from the former accountant of the ministry of foreign affairs in Ghana, who will personally fly here to meet me as long as I keep our deal SECRET and CONFIDENTIAL; and
• 6.8 million dollars worth of pesos from Mrs. Doorie Smith, who only speaks Spanish and who potentially called me an elephant.

So! Clearly I am rolling in the dough. The international dough. I’m just gonna sit back and wait for the checks to roll in. Let me know if you need anything.

I love concerts. I have posted about them endlessly on this blog. I will go see anyone once. I will see the same shows over and over and over again.

But very rarely do I find myself sitting in my seat, completely in awe, thinking, “This is the best show I have ever seen.”

Two days removed, I still feel that way about the Punch Brothers show I saw on Tuesday.

The Punch Brothers are the new project of Chris Thile of Nickel Creek. They are a five piece modern bluegrassy kind of thing, and they are fantastic. I love Nickel Creek, and am completely in love with Chris Thile, so when the opportunity presented itself I jumped on the chance to see his new band even though I had no idea what they were all about.

They did some great covers – White Stripes, Wilco, Chuck Berry. But the centerpiece of the show is “The Blind Leaving the Blind”, which is something of a bluegrass symphony in four movements. And y’all? It was incredible. I don’t know how to describe music like that… it’s moving and emotional and stretching and fascinating. I was so sad when it was over.

The band itself was great. The thing about Chris Thile is that everyone is in love with him. Everyone. And he performs like he knows that everyone is in love with him and his adorableness and his talent and his corduroy blazer. So what does he do? He goes out and finds four more equally talented though not necessarily equally adorable guys and puts together this band of young talented adorable guys in suspenders and sneakers and the whole thing is just enchanting.

So there I was, in a big comfy chair at Vanderbilt, watching this fantastic performance of beautiful music with great lighting and adorable musicians, and I’m thinking that it just can’t get any better. The show ended and we went out to the lobby to check out the merch table and wait out the rain.

Then. Then! The band comes out! Apparently everyone else knew that was happening, but we were caught totally by surprise. Especially when the band member closest to where we were standing was my boyfriend and yours, Chris Thile. So I grab my friend Becka and we run over there and commence the babbling portion of the evening, where we talked over each other about how much we love him and how we go to all his shows together and did we mention that we love him and the show was so great we are huge fans and we love him while he smiles and nods before Becka’s husband finally shut us up by pulling out the camera.

If the Punch Brothers are coming anywhere near you, get there. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Go to the show. You will not be disappointed.

THING THE FIRST

Last weekend we saw Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban at the movie theater. It was crazy. They were just hanging out, waiting in line like the rest of us, talking and laughing. Everyone in the lobby was freaking the heck out, but they were mostly leaving them alone. It was hilarious to watch the ripple of whispers and camera phones and people realized what was going on. She is excessively tall and pale and pretty. Since we are already BFFs, I didn’t make a big deal out of them being there. I did text a bunch of people, though.

THING THE SECOND

We keep our trash and recycle bins right by the side door of our house. Yesterday morning when we got up, our recyle bin was at the other end of the driveway, open, and it had two used diapers in it. WHAT IS THIS INSANITY? Who does that? Also, to clarify, they were baby diapers, not adult. We got that question more than once yesterday when we were telling the kids about it.

THING THE THIRD

I have eaten almost an entire box of clementines by myself in less than a week. They are delicious and I am addicted. Somebody stop me.

WOW, my reading was down this year. Way down. In February, for my ordination class, we started the process of reading a book of the Bible every week and discussing it. And even though I decided over a year ago to cut myself some slack on the procrastinating, I didn’t get much outside reading done this year. I am pretty well-versed in Old Testament history, though.

Because it sucked up a lot of my time this year, I am definitely counting all that Bible reading in my book list. Here it is!

1. Looking For Alaska – John Green
2. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
3. Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris
4. The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion
5. Atonement – Ian McEwan
6. Bird By Bird – Anne Lamott
7. Genesis
8. Exodus
9. Bel Canto – Ann Pachett
10. Leviticus
11. Numbers
12. Deutoronomy
13. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter – Kim Edwards
14. Joshua
15. A Long Way Down – Nick Hornby
16. Judges
17. Ruth
18. Illumination Night – Alice Hoffman
19. 1 Samuel
20. 2 Samuel
21. 1 Kings
22. 2 Kings
23. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
24. 1 Chronicles
25. 2 Chronicles
26. Ezra
27. Nehemiah
28. Esther
29. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – Alexander McCall Smith
30. Job
31. Psalms
32. Proverbs
33. Ecclesiastes
34. Song of Solomon
35. Catching Genius – Kristy Kiernan
36. Isaiah
37. Jeremiah
38. Thank You For All Things – Sandra Kring
39. Lamentations
40. Ezekiel
41. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
42. Daniel
43. Mudhouse Sabbath – Lauren Winner
44. Hosea
45. Joel
46. God Save the Sweet Potato Queens – Jill Connor Browne
47. Amos
48. Royal Harlot – Susan Holloway Scott
49. Twilight – Stephanie Meyer

Dear Gap,

You are on a roll lately. I have gotten so much stuff from you for so very little money. I love your coupons. I love your sales. I love your sweaters and your tall socks. Thanks for keeping me from walking around naked.

Warm and stripey,
Brandi

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Dear Group magazine,

Where have you been all my life? You are so full of information and resources and general awesomeness. I have been flying solo and pulling from my own brain for way too long, and you are replenishing me and stretching my creativity. My junior highers thank you.

Shooting rockets across the office,
Brandi

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Dear Brendan Fraser,

How on earth are you still famous?

Thinking you peaked in Encino Man,
Brandi

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Dear Southwest Airlines,

I don’t always love you. I don’t love fighting for a seat and an armrest and I really hate that snack mix stuff you always serve me and how I can’t fly straight to Dallas from Nashville. But I love your affordable rates in December that are allowing us to cut twenty hours off our holiday drive time. Twenty hours! I hate making that trip. Thank you for taking it away from me.

Resting my eyes in the middle seat,
Brandi

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Dear Rhino Theatrical,

I don’t care what Aaron says, my fireplace DVD is super cool and everyone knows it.

Thanks for making it,
Brandi

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Dear perfect flat and tall boots that are well made and cheap,

Where are you? Why can’t I find you? You are either too small at the top, or you have a weird heel, or you’re fake leather is especially fake looking, or you cost hundreds of dollars. I know you are out there somewhere. Track me down! I’m in the book.

Tottering on those pointy heels,
Brandi

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Dear Grey’s Anatomy,

You suck. Please release me from your spell.

Seriously? Seriously,
Brandi

So you may have noticed things look a little different around here. I have been looking for a new layout for a while… as much as I loved the grass from the old one, nothing else was really working for me. I’m sure there are ways I could have fixed it, but I am very very internet deficient. You should have seen what I put Geof through when I tried to fix it myself. (Thanks, Geof! You are awesome!)

I clicked over to Brandy’s food blog and immediately fell in love with her layout. Then I stole it. I love the colors, I love the rounded edges on the boxes, I love that the space for entries is big enough for pictures you don’t need a magnifying glass to see. Love love love.

I hope you like it!

Julie(tte) tagged me to write about seven things I haven’t written about on here before. Challenge!

1. I am obsessed with ballet flats. Obsessed. I have them in every color. I have four black pairs. I have some with polka dots, some with flowers, even some that are so shiny silver that they look like that goo in Flight of the Navigator that turned into the stairs when that kid opened up the spaceship. And every time I am out shopping I want to buy more. Like these. And these. And these.

2. I really, really miss my family. A lot. I love living in Nashville and can’t really imagine being anywhere else. But I miss my parents and my sister. I keep seeing girls my age shopping with their moms and it makes me sad. We are doing major renovation work on our youth house that I know my dad would love to help with. I want to spend a random afternoon icing sugar cookies and watching Gilmore Girls reruns with my sister. I don’t want to leave Nashville, I just wish those things were closer to me.

3. I read a lot of food blogs and tear a lot of recipes out of magazines, but when it comes down to it we pretty much eat spaghetti, green chicken and breakfast for dinner when we eat at home. More often than not, it’s Kalamatas. Or Five Guys. Or Baja Burrito. And I’m okay with that. I have relieved myself of the pressure to be an amazing food planner. I can cook just fine. I just don’t want to.

4. I ran track in high school. I was pretty good, too, for a white girl sprinter. I ran the anchor leg on all three relays, and we made it to the regional meet every year. I always played and enjoyed sports, but track was the only one that I had any real success with. It was fun to be good at it.

5. I have panic and anxiety issues. They are generally medical in nature, but about a year ago I could feel them encroaching on other areas of my life. I was planning escape routes at the movie theater. I couldn’t sleep some nights. Because I didn’t want it to get to the point where I just stopped going out at all, I started seeing a counselor. And y’all? It has been amazing. My problems are nowhere near gone, and they won’t ever totally go away, but I am learning how to deal with them. I have tools to help me manage my thoughts when situations arise. I feel moderately equipped to go out in public. And I have decided that everyone should spend some time in counseling, whether they have identifiable issues or not. It’s been so helpful for me to gain perspective on my world and learn to pay attention to how I think.

6. I am married to a man with whom I have very little in common, at least when it comes to the little things. We don’t generally like the same movies, music, food or books. There’s a lot of common ground, but we veer off onto very different paths. Our very favorites in all of those categories are pretty different.

7. I am less scared of having kids than I ever have been. I am still completely terrified by the pregnancy and birth process, and it will be a while before I get to where I can really consider it as an actual thing I could maybe do. But the part where maybe a baby or a kid would live in our house and be dependent on us for food and shelter and guidance? Slightly less scary. We don’t really know where we would put it, though. Good thing it’s still not happening quite yet. (Sorry, dad.)