An Open Letter to Our Campers as You Go Back to School

Dear Greystone Girl,

You may have left camp, but camp has not left you. You’re going back into the real world, back where life is complicated and people don’t get you the way your camp friends do.

Your trunk has long been unpacked and your summer freckles have started to fade. Your Banquet name tag is curling around the edges and your mind has turned to school supplies and Fall sports.

And yet, that cabin group text is still going strong, and nothing can make you laugh harder than those camp inside jokes (#thepile anyone?). Thinking back on your weeks at camp leaves you with a glow of satisfaction, still longing for the security, peace, and confidence you felt inside the Greystone gates.

Returning to school and the Fall routine always brings along a slew of emotions. Excitement. Insecurity. Nervousness. Hope. Pressure. Wistfulness for the summer past.

To all you sweet girls who are feeling the weight of the world this season, remind yourself of the Truth you learned at camp. You can enter that homeroom, that practice, that job with your chin held high in the knowledge that you are a daughter of the King. You are deeply loved. You are enough right this moment. He is well pleased in you.

That freedom and confidence and peace that you found at camp can be yours at home because the God that enabled you to feel that way lives within you. The God who drew near to you this summer has not moved an inch. Come what may this semester, your identity in Him is rock solid. No matter what grades or boys or championships say, you are secure in Him and nothing can take that away.

So turn on a Morning Assembly song as you drive to school this morning. Pull out those old plane letters and call a camp friend. Let’s choose together to resist the lies of the world and instead cling to the truth of the gospel. Because the more we listen to God’s voice over all the others, the more we can bring who we are at camp home with us.

In that knowledge, you are free this fall to let go of the pressure to be perfect. To smile at the new girl. To be brave. To dance like a fool or even roll down a hill (the Pageant Court isn’t the only place to do that!). In Jesus and His love, you are free to be the true version of yourself that you are at camp, so take a deep breath, and get out there! You can have confidence knowing that while the sun has set on summer 2017, this is only goodnight and not goodbye.