My Refuge & Strength

Day 8 (Monday)

Today went a little something like this:

• Morning devotionals
• Class (today’s theme was superheroes!)
• Free time
• Destroying the rinds of watermelons with a bat
• Sports
• Eating lots of candy
• Showing the camp how to play Mad Cow (the get-into-different-ridiculous-positions-as-fast-as-you-can game)
• Listening to Jenda tell the story of Joseph (through the eyes of Judah)
• Listening to Kuba’s dad share his story of how he came to Christ
• Discussion groups
• Night game
• Word group
• Not getting to bed till now (1 AM)

Ryan (American intern) destroying watermelons.

Playing Mad Cow!

Jenda, rocking his Judah monologue (he spoke entirely in Czech, so the words are in English on slides behind him).

The thing that I’m just beginning to realize I struggle with a lot is stress. Stress about class, stress about discussion groups, stress about this week going by too fast, stress about all my responsibilities back home. This whole day, I was so full of stress & so not full of confidence; & I guess I didn’t hide it very well.

After discussion groups, when all the campers went to get ready for the night game (capture the flag – in the rain), Jon & I were going over how the day went. Meanwhile, on top of all the stress, my heart was really heavy with the night’s message of forgiveness. I mean, I’d heard the story before: Joseph’s brothers were jealous of him, so they sold him to slavery in Egypt & told their father that he was killed by wolves. Then Joseph managed to become the governor of Egypt while his family was struggling to keep themselves fed. So his brother Judah travelled into Egypt to beg for food, having no idea that the brother he abandoned was now Pharaoh’s right-hand man. & despite what Judah had done to Joseph, & despite not even apologizing, Joseph forgave his brothers for what they had done to him.

So for some reason, even though I had heard this story many times before, I was brought back to the reality of my own unforgiving heart. To make a long story short, there was someone in my life who’d hurt me & who I’d forgiven with my mouth, but not with my heart. & now, I’ll probably never see that person again. So when Jon told me he noticed how insecure I was in myself, I just fell apart. Fantastic.

“Ah, crap. I’m sorry.” “Don’t apologize!” “I was just thinking about someone I need to forgive.” “It’s okay.” “I’m sorry.” “Stop apologizing!”

& then, for some reason, with tears & snot all over my face, I asked if he would share his story with me. & then, for some reason, he said yes. But before he went into that, he prayed for me, & it was the kindest, most genuine thing anyone has ever done for me in a long time. Then, almost two hours later, he had finished & I was just about speechless. His story was so honest & raw & deep. The only thing I really could say was thank you, because it blessed me far more than I think he even realized. So God ended up using all the stress that was boiling inside of me to blow at just the right moment, with just the right person.

Not too much later, the two of us got together with Merriam and Martina to write out words for the day. Mine was dependent, because through everything that had happened today, I feel like God really wants me to rely completely on Him & be dependent of Him. Because I certainly can’t do this on my own.