Community Time
This was my favourite aspect of the camp. I loved spending quality time with my church family. We had all our tents on the same site with a central marquee for sharing meals and congregating in during the day/evenings. It was great because there were always people about to chat to and the children all ran around together. Chloe made friends with one of the older boys who she probably wouldn't have played with at church but who she followed around constantly at the camp!
There was also the 5 aside football competition which we all went down to support. And the meetings in the evenings where the kids would join us for the worship and dance around together. Our church band was leading the worship for half of the meetings so it was great to support them as they played for over 3000 people!
A favourite time of day for me was the evenings. My friend had brought her baby monitor and our tent was right next to hers so we could go to the marquee and have some child-free socialising time knowing we would hear them if they needed us. We had fun drinking tea, eating cakes and playing poker!
I would say camping together is such a good way of creating fellowship in a church. There was a real sense of 'togetherness' for everyone there and I think most people had an amazing time.
Letting Go
The difficult part for me is that camping with lots of other people means that you become very vulnerable in terms of them seeing every good and bad moment your family has. Tents are not soundproof so any angry or tearful word can be heard, every strop or early morning wake-up call. You also have to be much more flexible and relaxed about how you do things. Mealtimes were communal so we had to fit in with everyone else.
I am realising more and more how much of a perfectionist I can be and how much I like to control things. I am very driven by a schedule and like to do things my way. This doesn't make camping easy. I found it difficult to 'let go' and allow other people to watch my children (what if they misbehave? What if people think I'm not doing my job? What if the baby cries and they don't know what to do?).
I feel this is a common theme in my blogs but it's something I know God is working on in me. It's the need to just love my children and allow them to be themselves without managing every little thing they do. Does anyone else struggle with this balance? I think I often fall into the trap of believing that good parenting is to produce well-behaved children, rather than to produce children who know they are loved and accepted just as they are. I think I'm slowly getting there. Camping was a good lesson in letting go!
No comments:
Post a Comment