A year ago I experienced Line Camp for myself, and it changed my life. In high school I wasn't particularly social. I knew the people that circumstance had provided for me, but having gone to school with the same crowd for 13 years, I didn't have any drive to meet anybody I wasn't already friends with. I made my rounds with the band nerds and the honors kids, and I was content with never stepping outside of those lines. At the start of senior year I cut my hair and gained a little bit of confidence, and a month before prom I found the girl of my dreams, but it wasn't until I became a part of That Good 'Ol Baylor Line that I truly blossomed.
I came to Line Camp completely alone. My parents dropped me off, and as soon as they left I knew absolutely nobody. While some people might have felt scared or intimidated, to me there was no more liberating feeling in the world. It was a fresh start. Nobody knew me, nobody had an image of me. I could be who I wanted to be. I could lose the awkward, and just be myself. (So maybe not all of the awkward was gone). I realized that I wasn't the least attractive kid in the room, I realized I was pretty good at holding a conversation, and most importantly I realized that everybody there was in the same boat that I was in. Nobody knew anybody, everybody wanted to meet people, and I was just comfortable enough to break the ice.
Not everything in our Line Camp session went exactly as planned, though. The second day we were there was scheduled to be the day we drove out to Independence, Texas- the original home of Baylor. Our busses were late to pick us up by a few hours, however, and we didn't arrive until much later than anticipated. None of us had any idea what we were supposed to be doing in Independence, so we had no idea that eating inside instead of outside wasn't in the original plan or that we were supposed to go on a tour of the town. I like to think that we arrived exactly when God wanted us to, because that night I didn't feel like I missed out on a thing. In fact, it was the most satisfied I've felt in my entire life. We went out to the four remaining columns of the original Baylor campus on Academy Hill, and right there, in the spot where Baylor students stood over 150 years ago, under the vastness of the stars in the pitch black sky, we sang. We sang about love, about God, about Jesus, about joy, we sang about Baylor. And in that moment, in the little town of Independence, far away from my life in the big city, I felt closer to God than I had ever felt, and I felt more at home than I ever had.
On the way home from Line Camp I cried. I cried a lot. You don't have your phone with you for the whole week, so that you fully immerse yourself in the experience. So you don't have anybody to tell your stories to except the other campers, and they don't care because they were a part of those same stories. So I got in the car with my parents and I just word-vomited everywhere. About my new friends and my new life and everything we did and as I talked I realized how much better I felt about myself and my decision to come to Baylor than I had before and it was overwhelming. I knew I had to do it again.
So there I was at the beginning of this summer, ready to give my two sessions of campers the same experience that I had. That was my goal, to help change their lives in the same way that Line Camp changed me a year beforehand. I had experienced it, and now it was my turn to help them feel as at home as I did. What I didn't expect was to be transformed again.
My love for meeting people and making friends never ebbed during the school year. I could go around the library for hours just talking to people, finding new friends through old ones, generally distracting myself instead of studying- it was much more fun. Sometimes I would just get tired of having the same routine everyday and I would show up to the library with no work to do, my only goal being to find someone I hadn't met and make a new friend. I definitely have a core group of best friends, but I also ended up with a lot of less-deep relationships, more surface level friendships that were closer to Facebook friends than Best friends.
Line Camp 2013 changed the way I see people, the way I see friendship, for the better. I still love meeting people, and I can't picture ever becoming less social. What I learned was the value of intentionality.
I came into camp this year expecting to form lasting bonds with my campers, but I hadn't thought much about what my relationships with the other leaders would look like. There were quite a few of them that I had never interacted with before training, and I didn't consider how close we would become. Now, I can easily say that some of my best friends in the entire world are members of that group of leaders, and we've known each other for less than a month. The secret to being such fast friends? We sought each other out more actively than I've ever seen, and it was wonderful.
Line Camp is a really emotional experience. We run on almost no sleep, we're away from home, our campers are away from home potentially for the first time, and the days all feel like weeks. In a time like that, you use all the support and encouragement you can get, and that's exactly what we provided for each other. There were so many days when I had trouble even getting out of bed, and when I passed another leader they gave me a high five and said "You're doing great, and you're gonna do even better today!" and that was all the boost I needed. There are so many of the leaders that I had never spoken to as of June and now I've exchanged life stories with, and I would trust them with the world.
Over a course of 3 weeks I was able to get know the 20 leaders of Gold Camp on a more personal level than some of the people I've known in Cypress my entire life, and even more so than a large amount of people I've met on Baylor's campus during the school year. And those relationships mean something to me. I've learned that if I'm going to be around someone frequently enough to be a part of their lives that I really want to do that. I want to REALLY get to know people. There's a sense of happiness that you just can't get without living in love, and that's what this is all about. As a group, we as leaders poured an immeasurable amount of love into each other, and it made for the most close knit group of people I've ever been a part of, and it made Baylor more of a home than it's ever been.
If you're reading this, we've probably met, but maybe we haven't. It doesn't really matter. Tomorrow I have a goal for you. Think about the relationships you have now, and the relationships you want to have. How close are you to the people you consider important in your life? Seek them out. Actively pursue and engage in meaningful conversation. Be vulnerable with people, and they'll be transparent with you. Live in love, and you'll notice the difference.
My goal was to give my campers the experience I had at line camp last year, and I think that for most of them that happened. Now I have a new goal, and it's to give the people in my life the benefits of the experience I had at line camp this year, and this one can't be put in a checkbox to be marked as complete or incomplete. It will be in progress for the rest of my life, after all, I'll never run out of people to know.
