My computer is broken!!!

Actually, to clarify, it's just the screen that doesn't work anymore. It's not smashed or anything, it just can't start itself up anymore. At least, I think that's how the Geek Squad representative at Best Buy described it...

So I'm in the market for a new laptop. I was wandering around the Best Buy in Zeeland getting all excited about computer (I'm a bit of a nerd, bear with me) and the computers they had on display have come a loooonngg way from where mine is, and I only got it 3 years ago! The one with the smallest about of hard drive space was like 300GB (mine is 212) and the most was 1.5TB (which is 1500 GB, for those who are unfamiliar with computer hard disk conversions ;) )!
For about 5 seconds I was seriously considering switching camps and buying a Mac, but then I remembered that all of my stuff is formatted for PC. All my music, documents, my entire external hard drive, everything. Sorry Mac enthusiasts, this girl's staying with Windows.

I hope to have a new one in my hands on Friday, so I apologize for not posting anything else on here for awhile. We're getting down to the wire with all of the college staff leaving for school and orientation and commitments and everywhere is short-staffed. Thank goodness we have only 50ish kids in Bible School (average per week is about 100) because we're down from 16 teachers to only 6. We'd really have a problem if numbers were as high as they were last week (120!) :)

Happy early Labor Day weekend to you all, try to relax and enjoy the last bit of summer, capische?

Andrea's Guide to Michigan Weather

Psh, yeah right. NO ONE has a guide to Michigan's weather.

I experienced just about every type of Michigan weather tonight (except frozen varieties of precipitation). I made the stupid decision to drive all the way back to the Grounds after a Spain reunion in East GR. Mom will be so proud of my ability to judge the weather and make good decisions about driving in it.

So, Spain Reunion - fantastic. Only 7 people showed up, and only 5 stayed more than an hour, but it was still a lot of fun. Cynthia made us some fabulous Spanish food (paella, tortilla, the works), we got to reminiscing, did some Ge impersonations, caught up on each other's lives post-Spain, and heard a lot about the re-vamping they did of the program. We were the last group to be in Denia, and the group that leaves in a couple of weeks is going to Oviedo, which is in the north of Spain, instead. It was so great to see everyone that was there and hear us all stumbling through our Spanish. I had forgotten how different people's voices sound when they are speaking another language. I'm not sure how to describe it, but some people have entirely different voices once you layer on an accent and different inflections. Over all, I'm really glad I drove in for it because it was so great to see everyone.

Now here is where the bad decision comes in.

I'm leaving Cynthia's house, lightning all over the sky, but I figure, eh. No big deal. I'll just drive back. Let me give you a bit of a play-by-play of my drive home.

East GR: I got a little lost in Cynthia's neighborhood, but ended up on Kalamazoo Ave. I figured I'd hit 131 as it crossed Burton, switch to 196, then take Lake Mich all the way back to GH. Straightforward, right? Wrong.
Burton and 131: Closed. Detour to Hall and 131. If I had known that 131 crossed Hall, I would have just taken Hall from Cynthia's to 131. Oh well, now I'm where I aimed to be. It's raining a bit, but nothing horrible. I forgot how much I like driving on the highway at night, especially through downtown GR where it's all lit up and you can see all the big buildings, not to mention, the cityscape was backlit by lightning every 5 seconds.
131 and 196 Interchange: No problems. Raining a little bit harder.
196's Lake Mich Drive exit: Raining harder, but it still doesn't occur to Andrea to get back on the highway and just go home to Grandville.
The West Side: Rain lets up a little, and I feel better about deciding to drive back to GH. Lightning is still tearing up the sky, which should have been a warning sign.
The area between Standale and Allendale (Stallendale) : Raining even harder, windshield wipers going almost full speed. Seriously regretting the decision to drive.
The Grand Valley area: OH MY GOSH, THE CLOUDS HAVE EXPLODED AND I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING. Hydroplaning is a way of life right now, and I'm scared out mah mind. Seriously considering pulling off at the nearest parking lot on this side of the road and ridin' the storm out.
Allendale proper: The rain has let up significantly and I figure, okay, I can do this. There's no point in turning around now because I would just be driving with the same storm I just passed through. I'll take my chances with the weather I encounter.
No Man's Land / Zeeland area: Fog as far as the eye can see (which is about a tenth of a mile, no joke). It's still raining, but not as bad. Lightning is still shooting from Holland to Muskegon across my windshield and I just hope I make it back before the next downpour hits.
US 31 and Lake Michigan Drive: Raining like normal, and then the BIGGEST and BRIGHTEST flash of lightning explodes right over my head. This is followed by, of course, the LOUDEST and SCARIEST crack of thunder EVER. I jumped and actually hit my head on the roof of my car. If I hadn't been stopped at the intersection, I probably would have caused an accident.
Lake Mich Drive between 31 and Lakeshore: All of a sudden, it starts to rain super hard again, and upon further inspection through the fog, I can see the raindrops are bouncing. Yup, bouncing. It is hailing!!
Lakeshore Drive: Riddled with fog and more hail, not to mention the continuing downpour. I made it home safe, and little worse for wear. My nerves are absolutely shot, though...

Moral of the story: Check the weather before you go ANYWHERE in Michigan. Then, disregard it, and prepare for anything because it's imPOSSible to predict it.

Stillness

Over the last several months, I've been finding it difficult to sing in church.

I don't know why this is happening, or even an effective way to describe it. I see the words on the screen, I'm enjoying the music, but when I open my mouth to sing, no sound comes out. My throat tightens and the words get caught.

I had been feeling guilty about this until today. People see me in church and they know I'm a Christian (especially here at the Grounds), but when they see me with my mouth closed and not singing, what do they think? God requests our worship, and most of us equate worship with singing and music. I know I do.

But what if God also requests our silence? What if he asks, "Please, just be quiet, stop making noise. I'd rather have your silence."

The verse that I came across that gave me some comfort about this dilemma comes from 1 Peter 3:4. It's the chapter that talks about how women should behave in the context of their families and in the church. I know there are about a million debates about whether or not this chapter has become outdated as it talks about how women should be silent and submissive to their husbands. But there is one thing that I'm confident will never become outdated; a quality that God values: "Rather, [beauty] should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight." I'm going to strive to find that spirit in myself.

I think it's okay that I find myself without a song in my mouth on Sunday morning. The song is still in my heart.

Mental Illness and the Church's Reaction

I'm reading a book right now called Finding Alice and it's the story of a college student from a religious family who, during a stressful senior year and a nasty breakup, develops schizophrenia.

Whoa. Schizophrenia. Is it okay to talk about this? What should good Christian people think about mental illness?

One overhears many things while working at a Christian campground, and these things (and the opinions attached) cover the entire spectrum of Christian affiliation. Even though this is a Christian Reformed campground, we also get Protestant Reformed, United Reformed, "plain ole" Reformed, and some other denominations that are farther on down toward the liberal side. Just the other day, I was selling candy to some children whose mothers were discussing a girl in their church who had been sent away to a rehab facility for her depression. I thought this news was odd, mostly because I know several people who function day-to-day with depression and, with the help of medication or therapy, come out all right. Some days are harder than others, but they have a support system to hold them up through the rough times. I listened a little while longer (and this has been the only time in which I've been thankful that kids have taken so long to choose their candy), and this is what I heard:
Woman 1: "She was sent away?"
Woman 2: "Yes. Well, can you blame them? They didn't want everyone knowing their daughter was (whispered) depressed. I certainly wouldn't want that to happen to me."
Woman 3: "Well of course not. What would people say? I mean, we're supposed to pray for those that are sick, but bringing this kind of thing up as a prayer request just reflects badly on the whole family, you know?"
Woman 2: "Exactly. This is just the best solution all around. I hope she gets better."

I had to excuse myself. It's no wonder mental illness has such a stigma attached to it. I could not believe these women. However, if they were raised in a family that behaved this way toward mental illness and had never experienced it firsthand, can I really blame them for having these opinions? Almost every church that I have ever attended has approached mental illness in one of three ways:
1. Since the symptoms are not physically manifested, it doesn't really exist. It's just an excuse for people to be grumpy and upset. We can't see it, so let's pretend it's not real.
2. Mental illness is the result of demons possessing one's body and soul. The person who is mentally ill is allowing these demons to possess them and they need to pray and believe with their whole being that God will expel them and heal them. It is a direct sign of spiritual warfare and the affected person has become the battleground. Perhaps they are being punished for not being faithful enough, but we can't know the mind of God. They must overcome their feelings of (depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, addiction, compulsion, insert illness here) in order for God to come into their lives and rebuke the devils from where they have taken root.
3. This one saddens me the most, and unfortunately, it's the approach I've seen in far too many churches in my short 21 years: Mental illness happens when a person is not being a good enough Christian. Anxious? It's because you're not trusting God enough and searching for His peace. Addicted? It's because you aren't letting God provide for you and He should be all you need. Depressed? It's because you're not taking advantage of the joy that God gives us. You just need to trust God! You wouldn't be feeling this way if you did some more devotions, read your Bible more, prayed longer, and attended more church functions.

It should not be like this. Christians should not be making other Christians feel guilty for experiencing emotions that have been labeled "un-Christian." As far as I can tell, every emotion ever felt by the human race was created by God (we are made in His image, after all) and therefore, NONE of them can be un-Christian. Do we look down on those who are diabetic or have heart disease? No. Do we put the blame on those who are confined to wheelchairs, telling them that they weren't reading their Bible enough? No. Do we tell cancer patients that they are sick because God is punishing them? NO. Then why on earth do we do this to people who suffer from mental illnesses?!

The difficult thing is that it's all happening in the mind of the person who is affected. Depression doesn't leave a rash. Schizophrenia doesn't make your limbs shake. For the most part, it all takes place in the person's head. This makes it incredibly difficult for the person who thinks they might be mentally ill. They second-guess themselves. They rationalize. They compare themselves to those who are healthy. And then, because of the stigma placed on their condition by society (and, unfortunately, the church), they deny, deny, deny.

Let's swing back around to depression in particular because 1) it's the one I know the most about and 2) it was the subject of the conversation that sparked this whole post. It's probably one of the most under-diagnosed and over-rationalized diseases on the planet today. Why under-diagnosed? Because people are proud and don't want to admit that their lives are less than the perfection they project on the outside. Plus, the church alternately claims it doesn't exist and writes it off as a symptom of bad Christianity. Why over-rationalized? Because society doesn't understand it. Depression is not "feeling sad." 'Depressed' as an emotion could mean feeling sad, but 'depression' as a state of being is a whole lot more complicated. It's more like...standing in a hole that is just a little bit deeper than your height. You can see out the top, but you can't climb out. You can see everyone else having fun and being happy and living normal lives, but you can't join them. This can manifest itself in any number of ways, from feeling sad to lying on a bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to even move.

When a physical illness brings a person down, the reaction is pity and sympathy. When mental illness brings a person down, the reaction is "snap out of it." You can't tell a diabetic to "snap out of it" any more than you can yell at their genetic code to prevent them from having diabetes in the first place. It's the same with mental illness of almost every kind. They are built into our genetic material and "snapping out of it" simply isn't an option. Personally, I hate it when someone tells me to cheer up or look on the bright side and remember all of God's blessings. I'll let you in on a little secret: the depressed person is often incapable of cheering themselves up. But it doesn't mean that we are forgetting God's blessings or ignoring His presence in our life. Believe me, God's blessing is what gets me through the bad days.

Here's what the church can do: minister to those who are mentally sick and help them find healing. Don't imply that their condition is their fault, don't tell them their faith isn't strong enough, and don't turn them away. I firmly believe that mental illness can be more dangerous than physical illness because we don't know enough about it and we try to diminish its power.

Overcoming the stigma is the first step toward healing.

You Is Kind. You Is Smart. You Is Important.

If you have not seen the movie The Help, I strongly recommend seeing it. I went with a bunch of friends/co-workers to the theater last night and I didn't really know much about this movie, but Beth said I had to come because I had off on a Friday night and I needed to do something. Okay. So I went to see this movie, and it was one of the best movies I have seen in theaters in a looooong time.

It takes place in Mississippi during the 50s/60s, right before the Civil Rights Movement really got underway. It focuses on the relationships between wealthy white families and the black women they employ as maids. Well, 'maids' might be too soft of a term. They are treated like slaves, except that they get paid. One of the main characters, Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan, aspires to be a writer and is shocked to witness the way that her Junior League acquaintances treat (or rather, mistreat) their maids. She begins to talk with them, hear their stories, and they decide to compile these stories and experiences into a book. The problem is that relationships between blacks and white were encouraged to be unequal in that society, and collaboration between blacks and whites in order to effect social change was illegal. Writing this book, then, was illegal.

The movie pulls no punches in their honest portrayal of this era. I was shocked and appalled by some of things I saw. For instance...
1. Black maids were not allowed to use the house's bathrooms. They either had their own outhouses in the yard, or sometimes the family was wealthy enough to add a "colored bathroom" inside. Many whites were under the impression that using the same toilet as a colored person would infect them with diseases that colored people supposedly carried, and a maid who used the family's bathroom was threatened with dismissal.
2. The maids actually raise the white family's children. The main character, Skeeter, was raised by her maid. The white mothers either don't have the time or don't have the interest for raising their children, but having children is expected, so the raising and discipline of children was left to the maids. So how does that work, then? Hundreds of kids, multiple generations, are being raised by black women, yet the black women have no social or civil rights of any kind? 9 times out of 10, the maid who raised a child would go on to raise that child's children. Yet somewhere along the line, the respect the child had for the woman who raised him or her disappears and they begin to act exactly as their mothers did. The title of this post comes from a line spoken by one of the other main characters, Aibileen Clark. She says it to her 'white babies' in the hopes that they will grow up to believe in themselves, even without the love and interaction from their actual parents.
3. Who, then, raises the children of the maids? Sometimes, no one. The children would be left with the oldest sibling all day (if they were not old enough to be in school) and therefore the oldest had to stop going to school to either become a babysitter or a maid herself, once she was old enough. Sometimes, a grandmother or another black woman in the community who couldn't work as a maid anymore raised many black children, but it was very rare because women needed to work just as hard in order to make ends meet for their family.
4. Black people were treated as second-class citizens. This seems like an obvious statement, but we don't always see it as much today. The Help really fleshed it out for me: White families would talk about their maids or black people in general in a way that would be considered blatantly racist today, but was commonplace in that time. It was assumed that black people could not be trusted, and for this reason, many were fired or beaten for having done things that they did not do (stealing, mistreating, etc.). The bathroom thing. Jim Crow Laws. They were treated as if they were less than human.

I wish I could meet some of the black women that were portrayed in this movie and hear their stories firsthand. I have great admiration for these women and the strength they have because I never really knew about this time period of southern society. We learn about slavery in school for years on end, and after the Emancipation Proclamation, we jump right to the Civil Rights Movement. But what about the 100 years in between? The Help covers the last 10 or so years of that in-between slice of history and it really opened my eyes.

I absolutely loved this movie and I can't wait to see it again. If I were a history teacher, I would put this movie into my lesson plans. Please go see it. You will laugh, and you might cry, but you will not be disappointed.

Something to Warm My Heart

I teach 3rd and 4th grade Bible School out here at the Conference Grounds and generally, I'm not the teacher that the kids remember. Or, if I am the one they remember and point out to their parents, it's the kids that aren't my students. In fact, most of the 4 and 5 year olds get me mixed up with their actual teacher, Samantha, because we look a lot alike, especially to them. But as far as the 3rd and 4th graders go, it's usually James that they remember because he is so crazy and charismatic and somehow gets the "too cool for school" boys to behave.

That's okay by me. I'm used to it. But today, I got a nice little surprise! Corie, one of my 3rd graders, came into the store about 17 times. This is not unusual for Corie, who is at the Grounds all the time. Her grandparents work here, her mom is the main gal for Special Needs Week, and they love any excuse to come out to the beach and get ice cream. The final time that she came in, she handed me a note. I opened the note, and this is what it said:

It warmed my heart right up! Not only because it was so cute, but because it cut to that piece of my heart that twinges whenever my kids forget my name and that I'm their teacher. I know that there are kids who know who I am and remember my name and think I'm great, but I always seem to remember the ones that don't. That's how it always is, isn't it? We remember only the sad, and never the good. Anyway, I had to come around the corner and give Corie a big hug, and I told her that she made my whole day. I wished her a good school year, and she promised to tell me who her teacher is as soon as she finds out. :)

After a week of unruly misbehaving boys, my little Corie turned it allllllll around.

Top 8: Highlights from the 2011 Campo Family Reunion

Sorry for not posting in ages...things got hectic and busy.

8. Getting to sit in the front seat for the drive (Matthew and I drove separately) and getting to pick the music.
7. Finally being old enough to drink the EXCELLENT wine that my Uncle Bill's winery makes.
6. My drunken Uncle Don announcing on Saturday night that he drank 10 beers.
5. Going to the beach for the first time in 3 weeks while in Traverse City. This is ironic because I live right on the beach in Grand Haven.
4. Playing Spoons out on the deck at cousin Doug's house and ripping the tablecloth beyond all repair.
3. My drunken Aunt Phyllis asking me who I'm doing instead of how I'm doing.
2. Not having to work in the store Friday OR Saturday.
1. Seeing all of my extended Campo family relatives and all the cute little kids they've had recently!