Intentions. Whether ours are healthy or harmful, selfish or selfless, influential or ineffective – they’re something we ALL have. This reality is definitely one that became clear to me over this past summer in the aftermath of an internship at Crowder’s Ridge Conference and Retreat Center in Gastonia, NC. This camp and retreat center holds a camp each summer called Ecamps, or Experience Camps, where churches come in for their youth to be challenged and even more so, changed. The camp affected my life greatly as a camper the summer before (2016), and it ultimately changed my perspectives on everything around me and more. The place just felt like home. For this reason, I decided to intern there one week this past June – and it turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Talk about leaving a comfort zone. I was surrounded by staff and other interns that I had never met before, along with campers of Baptist (and later on in the week, Foursquare) faith from across the east coast. I didn’t know how to act like a camp staff member, much less one that leads and guides campers in their faith, some of which were older than me. But that was the point. I wanted to be there, and I relentlessly went for it, regardless of any other doubt that told me I wasn’t able.

Talk about change, talk about faith, talk about religion all you want, but what God revealed to me this week far exceeded the standard opinion of an influential week at camp. The theme of this year was “Grit,” which in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term goal or end state, coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective. What really set the bar straight for the week was when my intern director said something along the lines of, “one goal we have here at Crowder’s Ridge is to break down walls in kids’ lives so that they can be open to change.” This statement was so special to me for the very fact that I had experienced that and had been changed just a year before in the same very setting I was in right then. What was different this year was that I got to be a part of breaking down other people’s walls and of allowing their hearts to be changed.

As an intern, I stayed with staff, but I also got a chance to be one on one with individual campers. I worked at different areas of the lake over the course of the week, where I was able to connect with far more kids than I ever had before (ask me how it was trying to learn 400 names in one week – it wasn’t the slightest bit easy). One task I was challenged to take on over the week was to ask campers about their story, about their lives, and about their faith and how it was found. My director told me that regardless of how uncomfortable it’d be, that it’s a must to intentionally seek out to know someone’s heart so that you can make an impact on them. I met girls from my own state along with people from Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. I had the opportunity to talk with a guy who got a tattoo for his sister who had passed; his reminded me of the closeness of my brother and me. I had the opportunity to hear about a Foursquare Gospel denomination student’s plans to make a change in his school by overtaking all surfaced-level ideals and stretching and challenging people in their faith. I got the chance to grow close to and pour into a group of youth from Fountain Inn, SC, in which I am still very close to today. Instances like that you don’t forget. People you meet, people who pour into you, and people who you are able to pour into, you don’t forget. I’m young, and I have a lot ahead of me, but the week I got to experience at camp is a constant reminder that everyone is on a different path, regardless of what that may be. It also encouraged me to run through this life in full – to gain everything I can from it – and to be intentional with everything I do in order to show people that they matter. (Hence, Hebrews 12:1 – “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us…”)

Intentions. Intentional ones, at that. Anywhere and everywhere we go as people, we have to look to make that impact – to do everything we do, with a point. It’s like this: what’s the use in us showing up to school if we don’t intend to try? What’s the point of playing a game if you don’t intend to throw yourself and your focus into it in order to win? Something as practical as this can set the comparison for what I’m trying to get across here. You have a purpose, that’s a fact, but whether you make it a point to carry that out or not is on you. Opportunities can be asked for and given, but seizing those opportunities rather than just letting them pass by requires grit. Life’s absurd at times, and it’s easy to let life pass without considering east from west as you go about your day. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t always look to be that light in every circumstance we find ourselves in, or that we should to intend to be intentional. It’s a lesson I’m still teaching myself, and I’m thankful I’ve had opportunities where I could carry out that aspect of life.