sovereignty.

After EIGHT crazy weeks of Senior Staff Training, Staff Training, and Camp, the summer at Camp Cedar Cliff has officially ended. At the beginning of the summer, the staff wrote these "Letters to God" where we just basically poured our hearts out to the Lord for the summer. We prayed for the summer and asked God to do certain things in our lives, in the lives of campers, and in the lives of other staff throughout the summer. One thing that I asked was that God would do something totally unexpected. And He did.

During my sophomore year of college, I walked through some pretty hard stuff, mainly having to do with some really long friendships ending. I won't go into too much detail here, but basically I'm no longer friends with some people whom I'd been friends with for over a decade. Many times during that process, I would ask God, "Why?". "Why are you letting me go through this stuff? This isn't good." And I never got an answer. Never once did the Lord say, "I'm letting you walk through this for this reason." Not until this summer.

This summer, I supervised and mentored fourteen 15-17 year olds. I specifically spent time with three of the girls, and I got to know them and their hearts pretty well. About halfway through the summer, two of them came to me with stories so similar to mine that I had to laugh. I thought, "This is crazy. There is no way they are dealing with some of the same things I dealt with." But they were. And I was able to walk with them through some really hard stuff, I was able to give them advice since I'd literally been in the same spot they were in just a couple of years earlier, and I was able to pray with them that God would be sovereign in this area.

It didn't really hit me until Saturday at just how sovereign God had been in that area of my life, really in all areas of my life. None of this wouldn't have happened if I hadn't broken my ankle in 2011. Knowing that God used that awful summer to affect, greatly, this summer pretty much blew me away. I never would've guessed that the lessons I learned then would be applicable to some high schoolers this summer. But that's how sovereign He is.



We sang this song a LOT this summer, and I absolutely love it. I'll let it speak for itself.