Memories

I have been here on Cape Cod with Don & Tammy Blackwell and enjoying the company while waiting for Noah to show up with the Ark. So much I learned about myself and ministry came from the community at Camp Dennen when God gave me the honor of preparing me to serve Him. Visits with Don and Tammy always bring up talk of our kids and grandkids and life, but also Camp Dennen. So many things changed in me there the memories of them today even still surprises me. One thing I learned is to be intentional about not being trapped in the past. Lat me give you an example. I was a kind of wild and crazy kid when I was young and a moderately successful athlete, but I was skinny. Six foot two one hundred forty pounds I was not just thin I was skinny. I always had a view of myself as the skinny weakling in the old comic book adds. That was the picture of myself that I had carried in my head as my identity for many years. At Camp we created campsites by hand including stumping the trees. One day I was walking across camp when I came upon a group of volunteers who were working to take out a moderate sized stump. The hole around the stump was huge and deep but when I asked how they were doing they said they couldn't get it out and had tired everything. I looked at it jumped down in the hole took a couple of digs with the shovel then bent down and grabbed it and threw it out of the hole. All of a sudden the picture I had carried in my head about the skinny weakling was updated. That was not who I was any more.

In so many different ways God changed the picture of who I was as I served that community. I discovered the person God intended me to be from the beginning. He had been there all along in the DNA but scars and flaws had hidden him away and he was most certainly invisible to most. I think Marsha saw that hidden guy at times, but not often. I know so many people who have distorted pictures of themselves in the frames of life. In the pictures they look small and frail and flawed and scarred and ugly and weak, but beneath that picture is the real self that God knows and loves. He knows the person of your DNA, the beautiful one he created you to be and He wants you to meet them. I was fortunate to be at Camp Dennen in a community that started me on the process with Christ of discovering my true identity. Child of God, Son of the King, anointed one of God, the picture has changed many times and I'm still discovering the prize inside like the Cracker Jacks box. I pray for your journey of discovery as well. Wherever you are you can take the journey of discovery, and find your true self.