What the Lord Has Done for Me {Loneliness, and COTW}

During my sophomore year of college, several of my music major friends told me about a place in upstate New York--a Christian family camp in the Adirondacks--and suggested that I consider working there on the music staff the following summer.

For some strange reason, I thought that would be a good idea.  

For some even stranger reason, my parents thought so, too.  ;-)

Looking back, I realize their sacrifice--something I never had the insight to consider at the time.  I mean, maybe they were glad to get rid of me for a summer.  ;-)  But I think it more likely that they missed me tremendously--their youngest child, who had been away at college all year anyway, and now I wanted to leave for the summer, too?  And not to a nearby camp, but one that was four states away?

In their unselfishness, they gave me up, in a sense, and I applied for the position and got it.  I would be working on the music staff (for free) and serving in the dining hall as a waitress (for pay--the only compensation coming from the tips that the families we served gave us at the end of the week).  It was a fabulous situation, really.  I got to play lots and lots (and lots and lots) of music, which I loved.  I got to meet some really wonderful families and get to know them through serving them three times a day all week.  I got to hear some incredible speakers (Ravi Zacharias, Alistair Begg, to name a few) and soak in the wisdom of the Word they were sharing during the daily chapel services.  And I got to live in a gorgeous location and savor the beauty of God's creation at Camp-of-the-Woods all summer long.

But an unexpected problem crept in and became such a significant factor during that summer that I still remember it, 22 years later.

Loneliness.

Growing up, I was surrounded by a loving family and caring friends.  Loneliness was not often an issue.  But because of a mixture of circumstances, the specter of loneliness loomed large for me in the summer of '95.

What circumstances?  Well, some of these seem silly now, but I'll admit to them anyway...

~ I had been in a long-term dating relationship that had lasted several years but ended at the beginning of my sophomore year of college.  After that break-up, I had a few dates, but no significant relationship; and I acutely felt the absence of a "special someone."

~ The schedule was so busy (partially because, as a pianist, I had the obligation to learn not only my own music, but also accompaniments for other instrumentalists and vocalists--and partially because, as a perfectionist, I put a lot of pressure on myself to do things right) that I felt like I didn't have as much time as you might think to get to know the other staff.  Oh, we were friendly to each other, and became friends that summer, but a tell-tale sign of the lack of deep friendships in my life from that camp experience is the fact that, if I'm thinking correctly, there are only TWO of my fellow staff members from that summer that I am in any kind of contact with today.  In the day and age of Facebook and easy connections, that seems pretty low!

~ Someone I knew had told me about someone who would be working at COTW that summer and assured me that we would hit it off great, and it would be wonderful.  As it turned out, he (yes, it was a guy, but it wasn't set up as a romantic thing, just a friend thing) barely noticed me.  So much for that!

~ I was at a really awkward, really insecure stage of life (we all have some of those lurking in our pasts, right?).  I had had my hair short during my sophomore year of college (I personally love my hair being short) :), but I was growing it out in preparation for my approaching semester abroad in Israel, and growing hair out can be...well...painful.  So it was for me, and I had no idea what to do with my mophead!  (Which makes me laugh now, but wasn't the slightest bit funny then.)

~ On top of that, I inexplicably developed a rash on my face, which--I learned later--came from a new face wash I was using.  It would have been great if I had quickly clued in to the fact that the cleaning solution was actually making me break out, but no, it took a while for that discovery to infiltrate my brain.  Rash on face = quite the confidence zapper for a 19-year-old girl.

~ More significantly, I missed my family.  I had never been away from them for that long, since, even when I was at college, I could see my brother David regularly because we went to the same college, and my parents were only three hours down the road.  COTW was much further than that from Virginia, and I knew I wouldn't get to see them until the end of the summer when they came to pick me up.

Add all that together, and you get a great big pile of loneliness.

Let me be quick to say that Camp-of-the-Woods was in no way at fault in this.  Nobody was bullying me.  Nobody was treating me unfairly.  Everyone was kind.  Everyone was friendly.  I can't and don't want to cast a single ounce of blame on anyone for my loneliness.  It simply was a result of the factors I mentioned above.

And you know what?  Loneliness isn't all bad.  It's not a sin to feel lonely; as a matter of fact, it can be an invitation to press in and go deeper in relationships, especially our relationship with God.  He doesn't tell us in the Bible, "Thou shalt not be lonely," but He does say, "Delight yourself in the Lord" and "I have loved you with an everlasting love."

Into my loneliness came moments of refreshment: things like, the frequent letters I received from home (the mail lady at camp kept candy on hand for us so that if we came to check our mail and discovered we had none, she would give us a piece of candy instead--thanks to my mother's diligence in writing, I didn't get too many pieces of candy from the mail lady that summer!), insight from a book about loneliness that I found in the camp bookstore and gladly purchased and read, and one encounter with God on the dock late at night.

I am not quick to say, "I heard the voice of the Lord today," or "God gave me a specific message for you," or "thus saith the Lord," or any of that.  But one night at camp, as loneliness surged over me, I went out on the dock by the quiet lake, and my heart was laid bare and open before the Lord.  And then, I heard--not audibly, but with the ears of my heart--"It is not good for Davene to be alone."

I don't want to be presumptuous and assume that those words brought as much comfort to my soul as God's original proclamation must have brought to Adam's.  ;-)  But the peace that flooded my inmost being was deep enough and high enough and long enough to reassure me immediately, sustain me in the coming months, and remain tucked away in my memory, all these many years later.  God saw me, He loved me, and He had a plan for my life; and that plan included an end to my loneliness.

During our recent vacation there, I thought a number of times about the contrast between me then and me now, between my life situation then as a single college student versus my life now as a happily married mother of six.  Without a doubt, God fulfilled the word He gave me that night, and transformed the garment of loneliness that lay on my shoulders that summer into a robe of abundant relationships.  To be there with Jeff and our beloved children--plus our friend Amanda and her two children--made me realize afresh how far God has brought me.

That night on the dock, when I felt my aloneness so keenly, I never could have imagined this...

...and, as I reflect on these things, my heart wells up and wants to shout, "Look what the Lord has done for me!"

It is not my own doing--it is all His--and He's still in the business of transformation.  What changes will He make in me during the next 20 years that will astonish me and cause me to give the glory to Him for what He has done?