Foster Youth Camp: Where Struggle Finds Joy

July 14, 2013 — Costa Mesa, California

I close the door behind me, desperate for the quiet that only four beige walls and a toilet-throne can provide. My foster youth camp is over, over already, and I’m being forced to attend an hour-long debriefing with all the other counselors.

I’m exhausted. Staying here in this church office building with the kids now returned “home” — if that’s the word you can even use — is the last thing I want to do.

I want to run. I could easily grab my suitcase and slip away unnoticed…

I want to run because this weekend changed my life, and I cannot articulate that to anyone. Not to 40 other counselors in a meaningless debriefing, not even to myself. Only this isolated corner stall can hold my quaking heart and hear me in this moment.

Bathroom stalls and me and camp: what else is new?

***

For the last two summers, I’ve done camp. I’ve done it as hard as you can do it. I’ve done it in the form of cooking ridiculous 100-person meals and I’ve done it in the form of protecting kids from bears.

I’ve lost control of my emotions in the company of peers who appeared to have it all together. These last two summers, I’ve experienced certain doom at camp.

Not this time, though.

True, this particular summer camp would last only a single weekend. If the first day happened to suck, guess what? I only had 36 hours to go.

Thankfully, the first day of camp did not, in fact, suck. Nor the second, nor the third. It was, in fact, a beautiful weekend that — naturally — brought me to tears the second night.

Foster Youth Camp: Here We Go Again Sorta

Approximately 40 kids and 40 counselors attended this weekend camp adventure to a place in the mountains just 45 minutes from my home. What was unique and sobering about these 40 campers was that they were mostly foster youth.

None of them lived with their birth parents.

Each counselor was paired with a camper for the weekend, and I was fortunate enough to be paired with one of the studliest ones there: a 12-year-old skinny black boy with the most positive, outgoing spirit you could imagine. I’d met Julio at a pre-camp event a couple weeks ago, and we quickly bonded over our ineptitude at Halo.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if you and I were in the same cabin?” he asked me in between bites of pepperoni pizza.

I looked down on his joyful face and returned a smile of my own, floored by his bold sincerity. Yes, I thought. Yes, that would be quite cool.

Among the 40 kids at foster youth camp, my heart latched onto three others that hailed from the same group home — three of the most precious 12-year-olds you could ever picture. One of them looked just like Justin Bieber, and we called him “Biebs” all weekend. Another shaggy-haired kid could break-dance, and the last looked like me.

No joke, the blonde mop over blue eyes and an innocent round face mirrored a 12-year-old Tom. My poor little heart couldn’t help jolting whenever I crossed his path. I mean, how do you interact with…you?

This foster youth camp was just like the last two camps in that the basic premise remained the same: kids go on an adventure while young adults guide and protect them. And yet this foster youth camp was so very different from the last two.

Emotionally charged, you could say it was.

Foster Youth Camp: A 12-Year-Old Affirms Me

Activity-wise, my favorite part of foster youth camp was all the team-building activities. The counselors participated with the kids, but we were encouraged to step back from the conversation as the kids helped us arrange ourselves alphabetically on a balance beam without stepping off, and they transported us across a lava lawn using only a fixed number of wooden boards to step upon.

It was a fun weekend of ropes courses and zip lines and water slides, to be sure. But two of my favorite moments happened in the more spiritually geared portions of the weekend.

On Saturday, counselors and foster youth alike were given blocks of wood, and we etched colored pencil marks into the surface upon confirmations of a dozen sobering questions:

Have you ever been hurt by someone?

Have you ever hurt someone?

Have you ever had low self-esteem?

The questions grew progressively more intense, climaxing with thoughts of depression and suicide. By the end of the exercise, everyone in the room had at least a few marks on their blocks — some more than others.

But then the resolution. We were given scraps of sandpaper, and we were comforted by the reminder of a God who can and does step into any pain, any loss, any lingering hurt as He “wipes the slate clean.”

We sandpapered our blocks of wood, and within mere seconds, they were made new and smooth again. Some blocks required more forceful sanding than others, depending on the deepness of the etching. The deepness of the wound.

Such incredible spiritual parallels.

Before we sanded, the counselors were given a few minutes with our campers, so I opened up with Julio about some of my own self-worth struggles. Immediately, he turned to me and exclaimed with Julioesque sincerity: “Tom, what are you talking about? Why would you ever feel that way? You’re awesome!”

And so, for the third summer in a row, a “mere” child radically uplifted my soul when I thought I was supposed to be there for him.

That’s the Body of Christ for you, though — it knows no age limits.

Foster Youth Camp: Where Struggle Finds Joy

On our final nighttime chapel, the entire outdoor amphitheater was reduced to silence when a middle-aged woman — a former foster youth — gave her grave testimony that included a drug-addicted father, a murdered mother, sexual abuse, and abandonment on the side of a road.

As if my tear ducts needed more practice, she invited all the foster youth down from their seats, and they formed a massive circle below. Held hands and sang the chorus to “How He Loves” as she said a prayer and proclaimed that they were all in this together.

As I watched this scene unfold from my seat several darkened rows up the amphitheater, my heart battered within my chest as my mind transported back to my lone night at Exodus and I realized it was the same thing.

It was the same exact thing: struggling people helping struggling people.

I’m a Christian wrestling with same-sex attractions, and over the years I’ve been blessed to connect with dozens of other such messed up beautiful guys, inside Exodus International and out.

And now, I was just another struggling guy watching 40 foster youth sing about how God loves them while holding hands as the Spirit of God hovered over their amoebic campfire circle. Hovered over each and every one of them.

It was chilling. Chilling and empowering all the same.

By the end of that night, my eyes were opened more widely to the world of struggles beyond my own. And I’m convinced God is constantly whispering to us, “Go and find your fellow strugglers. I’ll meet you there.”

Whether we struggle with homosexuality or childhood abandonment or alcoholism or what have you, we will always have brothers and sisters fighting the very same struggles.

And you know what? We will always have brothers and sisters struggling otherwise, too. While I was truly blessed by a childhood inundated with backyard baseball and loving parents alike, my struggling-in-other-ways self was still there for 40 foster youth waging childhood battles I can’t even fathom in my twenties.

We all struggle; we all need redemption. And we all have the same opportunity to reach out and take it. It’s there; God’s right there.

This weekend, I saw many precious foster youth embracing redemption despite the unspeakable hurts in their lives — abuse and abandonment on all scales. Unspeakable hurts aside, I have never witnessed such abundant joy nor shared in such genuine hugs.

Goodness, the hugs. These touchy-feely kids were hugging us counselors and dangling from our arms all weekend long.

How I love them; how God loves them. Oh how He loves them.

It was a powerful weekend that vanished in a blink. Perhaps I will blog more about it in the weeks to come, but this was the basic gist of my weekend:

I returned to camp, and camp once again rocked my soul.

In other words, God followed through on the past two summers and gave me yet another magical camp experience for my magic-thirsty soul.

Hopefully, I passed along some of my own uncovered magic of the last few years.