letters from barabbas

I just spent eight days at Camp Smile-a-Mile at Children's Harbor on Lake Martin. Friday through Sunday I was a counselor at sibling camp, a weekend retreat for siblings of cancer patients. Monday through Saturday I was a counselor at June camp, pediatric oncology camp for ages 5-12. A doctor and nurses from Children's in Birmingham comes for the week and administers their chemo right there and we have a great time.


It's weird how much of a personality you already have at age 8. I was sitting to the side one evening after dinner early in the week, watching them all play together, and I was blown away by how many adults I recognized in their childishness. They already are who they'll basically become, both in their giftings and in their weaknesses. I began to realize that my role as their counselor wasn't to fight with them for dominance, and it also wasn't to submit to their every whim and treat them like little gods for a week. But it was to speak life into their giftings and discourage their selfishness, make counterstrikes against their adversities and show them that they are valued and valuable. And the more I began to put this into practice with my campers, the more confident I became in my ability to love.
Because this is what fatherhood is. And husbandry. And friendship. Perfect love is speaking life into one another, spurning on faith and pruning out sinfulness. Not power struggle, but sacrifice.


Dusk was collecting over the lake Friday night and beginning to creep ashore when I finally saw my campers--three six-year-old brothers of children with cancer--in their entirety. The disruption that has torn apart their lives, the way they've been overlooked by parents worried sick, the emptiness in the one whose sister died last year and the relief of the one whose sister just finished her final round of treatment. The fragile strength and sweet patience, the pure faith in pixie dust and angels and a God who loves everybody equally. Darkness threatened to take over as it wrapped itself around the camp, but flashes of light from all around held the darkness at bay. Fireflies and flashlights and sparks off of the campfire were sparkling through the trees down the hill. Stars looked down approvingly as the beam from the lighthouse swept diligently across the water to the shore where silly songs and s'mores banished the darkness so that we could get on with camp.

I read somewhere that clinical depression isn't so much a constant sadness as it is an inability to carry out an emotion to completion before moving on to the next. Rather than mourning for pain and rejoicing in blessings and feeling like both sides of life have been experienced fully, you are overwhelmed, unable to shift your focus from the pain.
Thursday night after dinner we walked down to the beach for the memorial service. Those sweet, afflicted children held their candles solemnly to mine, with their hands and backs breaking the wind that would have extinguised them, and dug holes in the sand to leave their flames to die. And we all walked to the lighthouse and cried, mourning while the waves pounded the shore just below us.
But slowly we picked ourselves up and made our way back to the amphitheatre to have our talent show. Because life must be lived: the darkness explored, engaged, and released, and new joys discovered every day.
And live we did.



night fishing