Six Years Old

    

Six years old, and I was being set loose from my family for three whole days.  Six years old – and I was ready for puppets, music, Bible lessons, and friends.  Six years old – and I was first setting foot onto the gravel of a place where God had much larger plans to mold me.  Six years old – and I was a camper at Hidden Acres. 

     No one could have predicted the impact Hidden Acres would have on my life as my family departed and entrusted me to my counselors.  My future was a blank slate – my past at this point could have been considered a blank slate.  I was a normal six year old girl with long red pig tails, two missing front teeth, and glasses.  But when I went home, I anticipated with anxious energy the next chance I would be able to go to camp.  I returned the next summer, and the summer after that, and the summer that followed, and every summer that came to pass.  I cannot pin-point the true motivations that prompted me to return as a child, but ultimately, I know that it was God’s way in working His plans for my life.  Books could not contain the testimonies with which God has blessed me in the unexpected ways I have been developed through the ministry of Hidden Acres.  Nor could they withstand the intensity of which those summers have helped in defining who I am in the present.  As a young camper and eventual staff member, I have seen the Gospel message at work; I have been challenged at a young age to be an ambassador of Jesus Christ; I have learned the heart of servanthood; I have felt the rain of prayers and of His Word as He displays His faithfulness; I have experienced the Body of Jesus Christ in action; I have shared the joy of investing my life into campers for His purposes; I have found my identity in what is eternal and not fading.  All glory is to be given to God in preparing such a plan in such a place for this heart to develop. 

     Specifically, one of the greatest gifts of which God has used Hidden Acres to help me find is the gift of my laugh.  In a time when all my 15-year-old self-value was placed on rejection due to my faith, eventual loneliness and low self-esteem due to false and imagined opinions of others, my first summer on staff uncovered an Austin that I did not know was even hiding.  Being surrounded by authenticity – friendships that ran deeper than the surface – a confident woman who placed her identity in her Maker and Savior was unraveled.  Was this really me?  Nobody would believe it.  But I knew who I was, and my God knew who He made me to be.  My newfound enthusiasm for life sprung like a broken pipe full of water.  Joy had now given me the ability to laugh – the ability to genuinely smile – the ability to be me.  Puppets, music, campfires, Bible lessons, and Lake Lechler may have been the centrality of my motivations in returning to Hidden Acres after that first time I ever unrolled my sleeping bag onto my chosen bunk, but if that is what brings a growing individual to a reassurance of their identity in Jesus Christ, let us never lose sight of the importance of being six years old.

 

 -some of my campers and me 🙂