The Blunder Years

I was an awkward middle-schooler. My parents bought for me my first pair of glasses when I was in fourth grade. They were big for my face, brown, plastic - perhaps you remember the '80's spectacles that extended not only over your eyes but covered eyebrows and cheekbones also. I had brown wavy hair that never really stayed in the middle part. I wanted to have hair like Sam Malone from Cheers; my favorite actor was Burt Reynolds a.k.a. Bandit from Smokey and the Bandit. It wasn't until my early twenties when I realized that both Sam and Bandit wore hairpieces. I was well acquainted with acne pads. My face broke out when I just looked at girls. Hormones are a strange thing and awkward young lads all look forward to the day when their voices stop cracking and they stopped worrying about hair in the armpits.



In the midst of trying to understand what my body was doing to me, I tried to comprehend what God had in store for me. It was at this point in my life when I attended Bible Camp for the first time. There was an excitement traveling that hour and fifteen minutes to Okoboji Lutheran Bible Camp. This first time (of course my brother and sister went with me), I was nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. What would the kids be like? Would they be nerds like me? Would we sit around praying the whole time? Would there be all sorts of bugs flying around the cabins?



As it turned out, all of those were true to a certain extent. I think in some aspects, Jr. high kids are supposed to be nerds - in the very lovable sense of the word. Jr. high kids are all struggling to find their place in life. They are looking for acceptance. They are looking for stability in a shifting world. They are looking simply for someone to love them as they are rather than who they are about to become. The kids that attended Okoboji with me were all in the same boat. Most of them had parents who wanted to get away from their kids off for a week. Most of them were struggling with self-image. Most of them were nervous about the Bible - something read to them every week on Sundays, but still somewhat of a mystery as to why it made any difference in a world full of stampeding hormones. We did pray, but what was absolutely fascinating to me was that the counselors believed that prayer was important; we prayed, it seemed, fifty times a day and it wasn't the ordinary prayer "God's neat, let's eat." No, no. They were five minute prayers that called on the "Lord" fifteen times and asked God to "just" do it. We called them "Lord just" prayers. But the prayers never seemed forced; they "just" leaked out from counselors, former nerds themselves who had turned into devout college students. They were cool even to the point where emulating them seemed more important than Ted Danson or Burt Reynolds.



There were bugs, not the cockroachy kind that made my skin crawl, or the hand sized centipedes from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that gave me nightmares until I was 31. Now I have a whole new set of nightmares that include eight legged pseudo-insects and onions. My friends, in high school, dared me to attend the movie "Arachnophobia" and I have been scarred since. I digress. No, mostly the bugs were the kind that made high pitched screaming noises at night and bit my arms and legs. As I look back now, mosquitoes really didn't bother me that much. I was too fascinated with Amy.



Amy was my first kiss. And that, my friends, is really what Bible camp is all about. Of course I'm joking, but when the parents are away, the children will play. I'm not even sure I should even share my first kiss story, perhaps she might even read this someday and not even remember. But first kisses are something I hope everyone remembers. I remember the first kiss I had with Christine but I'm not going to write about that here. This blog is full if digressions.



Talk about awkward. I'd known Amy all of three days but the end of the camp week was drawing near. We knew that we liked each other. I mean, we had talked for at least two hours a day and had sat across the table and meal time. I'm pretty sure my counselor and her counselor knew what was going on but for some reason they didn't say anything. They just kind of smirked at each other once in a while. Now that I think about it, I wonder if there was something going on between them? It was all so innocent. After day two, we had held hands - in the dark of course - we did not want everyone to see us and certainly we did not want the typical childish chant "Reid and Amy sittin' in a tree" hanging around us all the time. It was a natural progression and everyone needs a first kiss, although I'm perfectly willing for my own daughters to wait until college. At the campfire on the third night, around 9:14, on the back bench, I leaned over simply to whisper in Amy's ear something to make her giggle, when she suddenly turned to me and our noses knocked together and our lips accidentally brushed. She had braces, I did not. But I think I hit her lips hard enough that the braces cut in. She was embarrassed, I think. I forgot what I was supposed to whisper and she turned her face back to the fire. I sat backed and looked at the canopy of leaves over the fire in new wonder. Now I was a man. Even though she was a 7th grader, I had kissed my first woman .



Amy didn't talk to me the rest of the week.



But it was a new world for me. My eyes were opened like Adam and Eve - not in a 'let's be like God' kind of way - but new knowledge meant that I could not go back to the way I was before. My brain and heart were being stretched in all directions at Bible camp. Not only did I experience my first kiss but I experienced my first brush with God also. There was something completely exciting about encountering God on a daily basis. During the chapel sessions I could feel his breath. During mealtimes I could hear his laughter everywhere. During my Bible reading I could almost see his finger underlining the words as I began to read. It was completely the opposite of my Confirmation experience (which I'll explain in detail next week). God was becoming real to me. God was putting on a semblance of flesh - Jesus was someone I could relate to - he was someone that seemed prepared to interact with an awkward young boy like me. Jesus was someone who was prepared to stand up for me and all the other nerds in 7th grade. I felt a camaraderie with counselors who were showing us a living God.



And I couldn't turn back to the ignorance of my youth. No longer could I just pretend that God was an irrelevance. No longer could I ignore the movement of the Spirit in the world. No longer could I turn my back on a Savior who wanted to speak with me. The world was "just" different. And so I stood at a crossroads of life. Boyhood and Adulthood - not physically or mentally but spiritually. I had encountered God and there was no going back.