You Can't Save Up

For those of you who read my posts for insights about education, this one doesn't connect, at least not in any explicit way.  These are just the thoughts I'm having as I prepare for camp.

For the next several days, I will be preparing for Royal Family Kids Camp.  Let me just tell you that camp preparation is no joke.  Unlike other travel, where you might stay in a hotel with toiletries provided and the ability to quickly pick up something you forgot, when packing for camp, one must consider EVERYTHING they will need to live for a week.  In addition to your clothes, you have to pack your sheets and towels and a clock.  Depending on where you are staying, you might even have to pack your own shower curtain.  That's before you consider the packing you need to do your camp job.  For counselors, that means cabin decorations and camper gifts.  For activities and program directors, that may involve pulling a trailer of supplies.  The nurses need to think about how many bandaids, gloves, and bee sting kits they will need, not to mention an organizational system for all of the kids' meds.  And don't get me started on the food service people - their preplanning is unreal.  In that regard, I've got it easy with my camera and adjacent accessories, my computer (with charger, dongle, and bag), and a notebook for all of the reminders (which camper wants a shot of them riding a horse, what each twin is wearing today so speed later identification, reminders of what to pick up on the WalMart run).  As I said, packing for a camp is a little more intense than packing for a vacation.

There are things, however, that we can't prepare for in getting ready for camp.  The heat is intense.  After all, it is the 2nd week of July in Eastern NC.  We are outside for much of the day, and we are very active.  Whether fishing, horseback riding, swimming, running relays, riding bikes, or doing archery, we spend a lot of time in the hot sun.  When we go inside, air conditioning has been running for hours to keep down the humidity.  (Did you know, by the way, that Willis Carrier invented air conditioning for the purpose of humidity reduction in magazine printing, and the lowering of the temperature was just a side effect?  Sorry for the sidetrack.  It's compulsive.  I've been out of school for a month, so I haven't taught anything in a while.)  Anyway, you come in from the heat and immediately start evaporating sweat, resulting in feeling incredibly cold.  For years, I have said that someone could make a fortune if they could invent a lotion that would remove heat from you while you are outside and store it to be released back into your skin when you went inside.  Or, wouldn't it be great if God had just designed us that way in the first place?  He could have.  It was within his power to give us the ability to store excess heat for later use.  He chose not to, so we can't save up.

The other thing I can't prepare for in all of my planning and packing is sleep.  When I was a counselor, the job was emotionally and physically intense, but it was the only week of the year when I actually slept 8 hours every night because I slept when the kids slept, and "lights-out" was at 9 o'clock.  Now, that I am the photographer, my week is very different.  The daytime part of the job is easier.  It's mostly running around taking pictures and organizing what needs to be sent for printing then going to Walmart twice a day to drop off and pick up pictures.  The majority of my work, however, takes place at night.  Those prints need to be identified and sorted because each of our fifty campers receives a photo album at the end of the week with at least 24 pictures in it.  The pictures are placed in the books.  I make a list of the kids we are low on, so my photography partner and I can make sure to aim at them more the next day.  I have a checklist to make sure that I have at least one photo of each child in the pool, with grandma and grandpa, doing an activity, singing or reading the Bible, etc.  If they have a sibling, we make sure to get a shot of them together.  (Man, my 18 years as a yearbook advisor comes in handy for this job.)  Anyway, all of this leads to progressively less sleep each night of the week, and occasionally an all-nighter on Thursday because that's when the bulk of the video is made.  I wish I could prepare for this by spending this week saving up sleep.  If I could, I would sleep an extra hour or two each night of the two weeks leading up to camp and save up on the rest.  God could have made us work that way, but he chose not to.

Why did God make us this way?  Why wouldn't He allow us to save up on heat or sleep or any of the other things you might wish to stock up on.  I think it is to teach us two things:  wisdom and reliance on Him.  The book of Proverbs is filled with wise advice about how to live prudently, including the balance of work and rest.  It's not a big deal that I get very little sleep for a week, but it would be foolish to live that way on a regular basis.  If it were possible to store up sleep, we might be tempted to live in unwise ways when it comes to rest (even with the way it is, we tend to make foolish sleep decisions).  

The second purpose, I think, is to teach us dependence.  God wants us to resist our natural inclination to rely on ourselves and our own understanding.  When he provided manna for the nation of Israel during their forty years of wandering in the desert, they were commanded to only gather the amount they needed for the day except for the day before the Sabbath when they were allowed to collect a double amount.  If they even tried to save up, the manna would spoil and be worthless the next day (except that the double portion collected pre-Sabbath miraculously did not spoil).  God was training His people not to hoard His provision because they might come to believe that they were the source of provision rather than Him.  I would imagine in the first weeks of wandering, it must have been frightening to get up each morning and look outside the tent, wondering whether you would eat that day.  That first Sabbath, after having seen extra manna spoil for six nights in a row, they might have worried that they would wake up to rotten food.  Yet, every day, God was faithful.  I wonder if ten years in, they felt secure or still wondered if today would be the day the manna didn't come.  (I do know that at some point they become so accustomed to being miraculously fed that they complained about it and asked for something different.  God help us - humans are prone to rebel, aren't we?)  For forty years, God gave them what they needed and no more.  Because they wandered for four decades, they had to teach the next generations the rules and show them that the rules were there because of God's faithfulness to them.

Next week, when I finally fall into bed at 2:30AM on Wednesday night, I will pray for the few hours of sleep I will get to be deeply restful (and that it will come quickly as it is difficult to turn my brain off).  When I get up and make the morning run to Walmart, I will pray that He gives me the energy to do the work He has put before me that day.  I remember writing about this during the days of the pandemic when I was using every bit of energy I had, but camp serves as an annual reminder to rely on Him because, if he has given you a task, he will also enable you to complete that task.

You Were Prepared for YOUR Job

When I worked in child care, there were a lot of people who wanted to be the director.  Well, I'm not sure if they really wanted to be or if they just wanted to criticize and believe they would do it better.  Many teachers want to be in administration.  Again, I'm not sure they really do.  I think they say this when they are in disagreement with a decision that was made.  Some elementary school teachers think high school teachers have it made, and vice versa.  In almost every job, there are people who will look at another job as easy while theirs is hard.  It's a part of the "grass is greener on the other side" phenomenon.  

But the thing is that it is not true.  Those daycare workers who thought they would be a better director would have been terrible, at least in the beginning.  They would have made decisions people hated as well.  As a teacher, I have a pretty narrow focus because I know how to teach science, but I don't know how to teach any other subject, and I for sure don't know how to make decisions that affect everyone in the building.  While high school teachers are jealous of the fact that elementary teachers have assistants and elementary teachers are jealous of the high school teachers' planning periods, the fact is that if either had to do the other's job for a week, they would curl up in a corner and cry.  God wisely placed you in the job you are in and not a different one.  He spent your whole life preparing you for it.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut.  I know what you are thinking because it is what people always say to me.  "Everyone wanted to be an astronaut."  Everyone did not fill out an application to the Air Force Academy in the fourth grade (I still don't know where I found that).  Everyone did not cut out pictures of the space shuttle from newspapers and tape them in their notebooks next to their pictures of Ralph Machio and Michael J. Fox.  Everyone did not babysit for 500 hours to afford a trip to Space Camp. I wanted to pilot the space shuttle.  I was about 13 when it became evident that wasn't the future God had for me, and I was sad about that, but that dream wasn't wasted.  It had prepared me to teach physics, a subject I had not yet discovered I loved.

I had great teachers in every area.  I had English teachers who taught me to communicate well and value credible sources.  I had math teachers who showed math to be more than finding an answer, revealing the world of fractals and polling and teaching me to solve problems.  I even had two history teachers who showed its value (which I wasn't inclined to believe at the time).  While I had great teachers in every area, there is no question that the most influential teachers I had were science teachers.  They were all teaching me to view the world in a way that prepared me to teach science.  I learned more than content.  I learned methods and styles of teaching that inform my own practice and philosophy.  Even my 6th-grade teacher's silly nicknames and teasing helped give me the personality necessary to teach middle school.

God prepares you for the future he has for you from early on.  My dad traveled for work.  He was out of town most of the time.  This meant my brother and I were at home with our mom most nights, so I was never taught to think of being home without a man in the house as dangerous, which is good since God was preparing for singleness (a thought I would have hated at that time).  Many women I know will not stay in their house if their husband isn't home.  They spend the night with friends.  It's a good thing I don't have that mindset, or I couldn't live the life God has for me.  

Next time you think you would prefer someone else's job (or life), keep in mind that God didn't build those particular muscles in you.  He didn't give you the skills, attitudes, or personality that would be needed for you to do that job.  He prepared you for yours, which is a good thing because that job is something the world needs.  It's almost like He knows what He is doing.