My daughter and I headed to Young Life’s Lake Champion this weekend (for more information about the camp click here or if you’re like “what in the world is Young Life?” click here) for their 25 year anniversary celebration. Mostly because my young life leader from high school was going to be here and I wanted to catch up with her but also because this camp is very dear to me. This is the camp where my life was turned upside down – twice. In 1993 I heard the best news of my life, a story about how the God of the universe sent his Son to die on the cross for me. My response to that grand love changed my life as I left there a changed young woman, never to be the same again. My heart had changed – a cold heart that cared only of popularity and being cool – to a heart of love who longed to get to know this Jesus who made me and find out how to love Him and others the rest of my days. Fast forward 8 years to 2001. I was on staff with Young Life and was spending 3 weeks at Lake Champion helping other kids have the best week of their lives. And during those weeks I met a boy. A really cool boy who was there to visit his friend Andy and help out too. A boy who just so happened to live back home where I was living. Sweet. And he was cute too. And I suspected available. Double sweet. We chatted for the few days he was there and I was smitten. We exchanged info and got in touch once we were back home. A few months later we were dating. About 6 months after that we were engaged. And about 4 months after that we were married.

Two really big milestones in my life. Huge.

So it was fun to go back to this camp with my 5 year old (okay I’m about 3 weeks early but she’s practically 5). She had so much fun and I kept thinking back to all the memories I had there. It was a sweet time with her.

Coolest was seeing how she got to spend time with the woman who greatly impacted my life – Mary. Every morning Lily and Mary would steel away from breakfast and go fishing. Mostly that consisted of Mary throwing the line out and Lily reeling it in. Seaweed was the main catch of the day. But then Lily said she thought she had a fish. Sure enough. She not only caught a fish but it was a rather large fish. No one weighed it but it felt like at least 2 pounds.

And our girls weekend was so nice. Just me and my girl doing a lot of fun things. She went water tubing (by herself mind you) and went on this swing called the Screamer (appropriately named by the way). She played in the sand by the beach of the lake. She ran around. She ate good food. She sat and heard about God’s love with me. She watched really silly people get up on stage and do really funny things. She met some new friends. It was really cool to be there with her.

The only sad parts were that Craig and Ben couldn’t join us and that we had to leave on Sunday (she was less than thrilled about that part).

I hope to do something fun like this with Ben too when he’s a bit older. I think it’s good to get away with just 1 of them to have quality time. Just another way we are trying to be intentional over here.

Happy June…and coming up soon will hopefully be some more DIY project completions. Woohoo!