Article February 20, 2012 Issue

'Shepherd, show me how to go...'

By Kristen Winderl

This past summer, I had the awesome opportunity to be a camp counselor at a summer camp for Christian Scientists in Colorado. For the entire beginning of the summer I had been working with the youngest kids, seven- to nine-year-olds, but for the very last session I began working with 12- and 13-year-olds. During this time, I had some tough things to deal with. I learned that a close friend and mentor of mine had passed away, and I was also going through some personal relationship problems and other things. There was a heavy sense of burden, and soon I also began to have a back problem. 

The new program I was in included a three-day hiking trip up a mountain that I was worried about because the last “14er” (14,000 ft. mountain peak) trip I had been on hadn’t gone so smoothly. I tried to deal with my anxiety prayerfully, but never addressed it head-on. My attitude was more like: “I have way too much to deal with to have time to pray about this, so I’ll just ignore the discomfort and do my best to pretend it’s not there.” Also, I tried to solve things by trying to get friends to “crack” and massage my back. Nothing worked. 

Finally the first day of the three-day trip rolled around. I carried my backpack with all its stuff the 100 meters to our trip prep area. Just doing that caused a lot of pain. I did tell the senior staff that I was having some back trouble. Of course they would have let me stay back if I needed to, but I downplayed the issue and said that I would be OK. 