I can't believe it's been nearly a year since I posted anything, however, I can believe it. It's been a long long long year. Emma who now goes by Eileen has been through two therapists, come out as Bisexual, attempted suicide, been kicked out of a clinical trial, returned to public school, and finally is taking a medication for depression/anxiety that seems to be effective...hopefully. Through all of this our family has been living sun up to sun set and it has been the hardest year of our lives. We are finally feeling like there is hope and light and maybe happiness. Our burdens seem, perhaps, just a little lighter.
The reason for this post is because I was encouraged to go through and clean out my Girls Camp folder to be stored away for further use for a possible later date. I've purposely avoided it, dreading the emotions it brings. The process was, however, bittersweet and has left me with a sense of finality but it's also left me with a longing to write these feelings down so let me begin two Septembers ago and I'll apologize now for the length...
After a confusing email and some clarification on who would be Stake Camp director I agreed to serve again as Assistant to the director but this time it was someone new. This woman, Patti, was someone I had not had the greatest experience with in the past. I thought she had brushed me off which led me to feel unaccepted. Later I was forced to swallow my pride and turn to her for help, which I thought made me look unprepared and inadequate as a camp director during my first year at Girls Camp in Louisville. The next year she was thrown into my path again but this time, me being recently called as a Stake assistant Director, I had to be kind and not hold a grudge and act as though there had never been a problem. Whether she remembered me or not she didn't act as though there was a problem and quickly I realized how amazing she was as a YCL leader and I learned my first impressions were incorrect. Upon receiving the news the new director would be her, I was excited to be asked to serve with her.
Right off she established a routine with myself and the other two assistants. We starting meeting monthly and in those meetings it was made known of my skill and knowledge about camp. She used those things and leaned on me for information and help even though she herself had many years of experience at camp as well. It wasn't hard to learn to trust her. Her intuition and relationship with Heavenly Father was inspiring to me and I found it easy to feel of her spirit and warmth. She created an environment where the 4 of us could become friends who worked toward one goal. We were unified and made a good team.
I tell you this history because it leads into and looks back at my long long long year. Month after month starting in October I would drive half an hour out to Crestwood, meet with these lovely ladies, and plan for camp. We would laugh and cry and plan and sometimes our meeting would be waylaid by someone's personal problem. Things with Eileen had just started to get really bad and I wasn't handling my emotions well. On one occasion I blubbered all the way through my devotional but Patti just thanked me and acted like it was normal for me to cry through a devotional, maybe she thought it was, ok she's right....it is!
Each month I would drive out to Crestwood, leaving Louisville and all my problems behind me as I headed further northeast. For two hours once a month, I left everything and met with three other women who weren't a part of my immediate life, who didn't see me on a day to day, who didn't know me well and didn't know my family well, who were all focused on planning Girls Camp, and who didn't NEED to know everything bothering me. I left my world and went to plan to do this thing for 100 girls and 30 leaders and it ended up being the only thing I looked forward to doing.
I would attend a meeting once a month where these three ladies didn't know anything about me except that I had been to Girls Camp 16 times before and I had been an assistant Stake Director and YCL Leader and Ward Camp director and YCL youth leader and and and. That was the only important fact they knew about me and I was turned to for my knowledge and experience and I felt special to be looked upon in that need because in my life back in Louisville, the one 30 minutes away, I had no answers and no experience with what was happening there. I was attending doctors appointments with Eileen where her doctors treated me with such contempt, leaving me feeling like a horrible person as well as a horrible mother and I didn't understand why. Looking back I think they thought I was some kind of bigot and honestly maybe I was.
As things usually do, camp prep got stressful which means I got stressed and my awesome family helped me deal with it even though we were all still going from sun up to sun down each day. Eileen was still with a therapist. still suicidal, and still on medication and for months we didn't see a difference and it slowly got worse and then it was time for Girls Camp and the Saturday before I was telling Patti I had to watch her closely because her suicidal thoughts were worse.
Girls Camp was everything great and everything terrible. Bats that may or may not have been rabid entered our cabins and forced us to leave camp days earlier than planned. I say it was everything great because of our first night. Our first night was Stake leaders, cooks, Priesthood, and YCLs. It was quiet, fun and perfect. Everyone was so full of excitement for what was to come and so filled with hope. I had the opportunity to teach the YCLs a spiritual lesson which I love doing and after, one of the girls and I had this incredible talk. We tucked the girls into bed and seriously, everything was perfect. That night I sat on the floor beside Patti's bunk, knees tucked up to my chin, whispering with her and it felt like kindred spirits finding one another.
The next morning things started to get wild and we were moving bunks and moving girls away from bats and trying to follow the Health Departments demands. Patti was giving me job after job and every time I thought it was time to calm down there was Patti doing something more and giving me another job. That night she was exhausted, it showed on her face, it showed everywhere but she took the time to have a moment of fun and then right before bed again I found myself on the floor next to her bunk in that kindred spirit moment again. Within an hour or so of that moment the girls had bats in their cabins and we were all awake, deciding to close the camp.
The next day 130 people were cleared out of camp and Patti and I were the last to leave the campsite.
At one point during the chaos Patti needed to handle something out of the site and turned things over to me to oversee. I felt honored to be her second in command and knew she trusted me. I had grown very attached and very protective of my leader and looking back I realize some of that was because she had trusted me and had given me purpose when so many other professionals in my personal life hadn't over the last months leading up to that point. She asked me to stay when so many had left and so I stayed on her 6, watching over my leader, taking on the roll as her protector even on the drive home until it was time to change freeways and say our goodbyes.
Camp was over, meetings were over, drives out to Crestwood were over and soon, even though no one really knew change was to be, I knew my position as assistant to Patti was over. There were rumors of change within our Stake floating around except I had been told by those in the know that this rumor would come to truth and our ward would be moved into a different Stake. I knew before we ever left for camp it would be my last but I was hopeful it wasn't true, even though I knew it was.
So Camp and everything about it was over and I no longer had purpose because Eileen still wasn't better and I still had no answers and no way to help her and everything around me crashed because I no longer had camp to make me feel of value. Truly that was the only place between prep for camp and at camp during that 10 or so months where I felt of value. My parents came to visit and that was wonderful and helped but soon after they left it got really bad and by my birthday I was miserable with not much understanding. Finally a friend reached out, my friend Sandie from camp, one of the other assistants, and she helped Eileen get into a clinical trial. Things looked up for a month or so until they didn't and Eileen tried to take her life right before Halloween. That month and a few weeks after were extremely difficult.
November, Stake Conference, change! This was it. Stake Conference was announced and I knew this was it. I had known for a long time but when our ward was invited to Lou's Stake Conference I KNEW! Just a little while earlier I emailed Patti, because I felt it was time to stop kidding myself, and asked her to let me bow out and for her to find my replacement. I hated writing that letter. I hated everything about this change. I hated this change, but I knew it was time. Patti told me she was devastated to not have me with them. I needed to hear that from that trusted friend and leader. I needed to feel special, wanted, and missed in order to fully let go. During Stake Conference they asked us to stand as we were moved into our new Stake. I cried the whole way through it but when they said any who had held a position as a Stake leader in the Crestwood stake has now been released and thanked for their service, it was like a wave of peace washed over me and I knew this was the Spirit of the Comforter helping me.
I've put off going through my camp folder and tossing the unimportant. I guess it was nostalgia and wanting to hold on to that particular past but I finally did. Going through some of my own therapy and being given some tools to help me has given me a lot of strength. It was really time to let go and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, mostly because I had sorted it right before camp so there was only the important for that time anyway.
Going through that folder and reflecting on all of this and how intertwined my life and Eileen's life and camp were this past year, I feel more than ever the Savior's power and love for me. He knew this would be the hardest thing I've ever done and He knew I would need powerful examples in my life to keep my head above water as Eileen went through her trials and as we went through them with her. I'm so grateful for the Savior in my life, for the influence and gift He's given me in the Holy Ghost. I'm grateful for friends who listen to the Spirit and grateful for those who walk in His light.These have been the people this last year who have brightened my life with the Saviors light when I didn't have the strength to see it myself.
This year of Camp, with the bats and all, will occupy a very special place in my heart. I've grown, I've learned, I've come so far. And though I'm still working on moving on, I know I'll shed a tear or two every once in awhile when I think of it. After all, you don't come away from something like this without leaving a piece of your heart behind!
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