After the strangeness of freshman year, I’m yearning for the safety of somewhere else, somewhere I know, so I go to work at Camp DeSoto. DeSoto is an overnight summer refuge for second- through tenth-grade girls who love Jesus. It sits high up on top of Lookout Mountain in Mentone, Alabama, where there are so many Christian summer camps, it’s hard to hear the crickets over all the acoustic guitars “Kumbaya”-ing through the valley. This is where I spent my summers as a kid, collecting fuzzy friendship bracelets and singing Chickasaw powwow songs I’ll never forget that were probably made up by churchy white teenagers in the ’80s. Jesus-loving is something that lots of people do in the South, so I do it too. My parents do it and my brothers do it and I’m not sure I know anybody who doesn’t do it, who doesn’t have a Bible at their bedside or a church they go to on Sunday or a camp just like DeSoto. I apply to be a counselor as soon as I turn eighteen and I convince Katie, my friend from school, to come with me.
Convincing Katie is easy. She lives with me in Miller dorm, the big cream-colored building where all the “best” girls live. It’s been slathered with so many coats of neutral paint over the years that the walls are gummy to the touch and pull away in pieces like orange peel. Katie is my best friend, she loves Jesus, and she also needs a summer job. When school lets out, we drive up to Mentone together with the windows rolled all the way down. She talks to me about God as we leave Louisiana and head into Mississippi, where the flat, swampy lowlands start to gain shape. As we enter Appalachia we climb up, up, up, the clouds get low and milky, and the green-leafed forest becomes brittle red pine. When we arrive, we park in the dirt and the dust hits my teeth. I’m met by everything I remember: the sound of branches busting under car tires; the smell of wet bathing suits, evergreen, and Banana Boat; the feeling of home.
“God is good.” Katie shuts her eyes and drinks in the scents of pine and lake water through her nose. She looks like she’s praying and I begin to wonder if being a Christian is more than just a thing that people do on the weekends.
“God is good,” I say back to her, but I’m really just glad to be far away from keg parties and lecture halls and blocking out the sounds of dorm-room sex through saltine-thin walls.
I am entrusted with a cabin of eight preteen girls at DeSoto. They are the perfect mixture of devout and devious and they adore me. There’s Sissy, who has two front teeth the size of Starburst candies; Jackie, who hardly speaks at first; and Constance, whose parents are rich with Texas oil money. They’re good in the same way that I was, looking to be loved and approved of but also for little flashes of fun. I do my best to let them find their way to harmless mischief, and in exchange, they make me their favorite. They listen to me and respect me and none of the other staff can figure out how I get through to them. My accomplice is a counselor named Leslie, who is as devout and devious as the girls are. Instead of teaching the aerobics class we were assigned, we play Tupac’s “California Love” over and over again and let the campers take turns goofy dancing in the center of a big circle. The director can’t figure out why everybody is singing songs about the city of Compton but no one gives us away. At night, after lights-out, I go around to each of them and we talk. I ask them how their day was, I tell them they are loved and that they belong. I remember how good it felt to know that when I was younger, how good it still feels now. Then I crawl into bed and let their giggle-whispers go on later than I’m supposed to. I know they are sharing the first secrets of their lives and about an hour after bedtime is the best time to do that. They fall asleep with the blankets kicked off, letting the cool moon shine on their pink skin. Sometimes I hear them praying little prayers and I wonder some more about God and Jesus and how I’ve ended up here watching their scrawny chests rise and fall. I don’t know if I’ve ever really believed the way they do, the way that Katie does, but I want to, I know I’m supposed to. I say my own little prayer:
Make me be good, make me love Jesus, make me believe.
* * *
Morning Watch happens every day down by the lake. We sit in a homemade, cobbled-together amphitheater we call the “worship rocks.” It overlooks a big cross sitting on an island in the middle of the lake. At Morning Watch, the counselors take turns sharing chunks of the Bible that they like or telling stories about feeling God’s love. Normally I don’t listen much, I just wiggle and wait like the campers do, but today is different. A girl my age is standing in front of us—her name is Michelle. She’s tall, like me, but her bones are lined with long, graceful muscles and tan outdoorsy skin. She opens her pretty mouth, the sun bounces off the water and covers her in golden dapples, something pulls me toward her, and I can’t look away. She tells a story that makes me itch in my skin about hating herself and learning to love herself again through Jesus. It’s painful and embarrassing, but she isn’t ashamed. She knows that she belongs and she knows that she’s loved. I look around at the other girls: tears are falling freely, sliding down burnt-butter cheek skin and smacking onto the dirt. They all carry a part of her sadness for her and nurture the words from her. It feels safe and tender, like home. I let tears warm my own cheeks. This is where I belong.
I say my prayer again: Make me be good, make me love Jesus, make me believe.
It’s just past 7 a.m. on Wednesday when I bust into Katie’s messy cabin. In two days, I’m supposed to lead Morning Watch and talk to the whole camp about why I believe and how much I love Jesus but I haven’t even found him yet. Since that day on the worship rocks, I’ve been searching for him everywhere—I look into the polished silver of the lake and think about it on the walk through the thick part of the forest that smells like fire and hot dogs. All I can see in the lake is my too-lumpy body and all I can think about on my walks is burning calories.
Katie is sitting in a nest of camp linens journaling furiously and twirling her mud-colored ponytail. She doesn’t look at all surprised to see me when the door swings open.
“I don’t have a Jesus story. I’m talking on Friday but I don’t have a Jesus story.”
I fall onto the empty mattress across from hers and bury my head into the citronella-soaked pillow. I cough and she waves me over to join her in the blanket nest.
“Ruthie,” she says, baffled, “you have a Jesus story. You are a Jesus story.”
Her eyes are looking into mine as far as they can, searching for some recognition. There’s none.
“Your accident. God chose to save you.”
The accident.
It has only been a year and a half but I hardly think about it. Katie grabs my hand and looks at me with absolute certainty.
“You’re alive, Ruthie. You are proof of the Lord’s love.”
It all makes so much sense. I’ve never asked for the reason why it happened but now I have one. At 7:22 a.m. in Katie’s musty green cabin, I rebaptize myself with two sprays of her Clinique Happy perfume and I get a warm, holy, grapefruit-scented feeling all over me.
On Friday morning, I stand with the big cross in the background and talk about what happened to me. I know the words are romantic and I like the way it sounds when me, God, and Jesus are the main characters in my story, three divine musketeers. The sun warms my back like my daddy’s hand while I speak and the girls are patient, like they were with Michelle. They listen graciously and don’t rush me through when I talk about how scared I was and how grateful I am to be alive. I’m fully exposed, imperfections and fears strung up and flapping in the wind, but instead of shame, I feel so much love. I don’t know it yet, but this moment will serve as my anchor in so many ways. Later, when I’m lost, unsure, or alone, I will learn to look up and around for those journeying with me. I will learn to let them carry me when I’m weak and I will learn to hold their weight when I’m strong. The power of community will shape, astound, and sustain me.