Spring Break Essay

This year’s spring break was certainly my most interesting week for many reasons. It stretched, moved, challenged, and changed me in more ways than I can number – all in just one week! I used my week off to spend several days with my youth group at a camp several hours from Dallas. The camp is known as Camp Eagle. I was expecting a lot of fun with a little bit of learning, maybe strengthen my relationships with the other youth. But what I got was so much more.

The ride up there was miserable. I sat in the tiny cramped spot on the floor between a seat and the door. I was smashed , couldn’t see anything, and someone kept on breaking wind. After several hours of smelliness, racket, and being terribly cramped, I was able to stretch my legs upon the bur-filled ground outside the cabins. I became determined to not sit in that spot in the van ever again (this didn’t really work out as planned, mind you).

Our first full day at Camp Eagle was interesting – there was a brief lesson, some activities, lots of walking, and a bit of free time. It was a lot of fun, but it was also everything I’d expected. Nothing super life-changing had happened, and I really didn’t anticipate that anything like that would occur. Camp has never been a life-changing experience for me – at least not in a good way. The second day was fairly similar until night fell.

On full-day two we had a brief lesson before we (that is, the youth group and myself) did something called the Cross Walk. It was an incredibly emotional time for a few members of the youth group, and that includes me. On the Cross Walk we were told to think of a huge obstacle or burden that was holding us back from Christ, and to imagine a stone which we had previously obtained to be that burden. I had no trouble thinking of a burden, and so I imagined that the rock I now held in my hand was that very burden. Without even a single word being uttered, I knew I was about to breakdown. But the walk began. At the end of the walk we reached a cross, and nothing was said. It was simply clear that we were expected to lay those rocks (or burdens) down at the foot of the cross. Several went up almost immediately – be this because they were easily able to give up their burdens or because they didn’t have a burden at all is beside the point. But I remember sitting there wondering to myself “How can they so easily give up their burdens while I sit here unable to give this up?”

There were perhaps two or three others out of the youth group left who hadn’t given up their burden, but I think that in the end, everyone apart from myself had managed to set it down. I still carried the rock, because I knew that if I set it down at the cross I would only be hiding the problem, not taking care of it in my own heart. I decided for myself that until I could finally rid myself of the burden and give it all to Christ, I would carry the rock with me wherever I went – even if that meant that I had to take it home with me. And so I did. I brought the rock with me to the bonfire and then when I took my guitar down to the cross and wrote myself a worship song, hoping that perhaps it would lead me to finally release that burden.

It didn’t, however, and so on the final full day of camp I carried the stone with me. All day long I carried it, and at one point I felt so miserable thinking about it that I requested leave of whatever activities were planned for the day. I simply sat on my bed praying, singing, reading my bible, and occasionally even crying while I waited and waited for the strength to come that would allow to cast aside the burden once and for all. But that strength didn’t come, and I couldn’t give it up. That night, though, I decided I would at least enjoy my last evening at the camp before it was time to pack up for the morning. So I put a smile on my face, went to dinner, talked to friends, made new friends, and enjoyed myself. I loved that night, because I was able to set aside anything and everything that was hurting me to just live my life. I realized then that perhaps I wasn’t just putting on a mask of being fine – maybe I really was fine, and maybe what happened to me was no longer as much of a burden as I thought it was.

When I got back to the cabin and after the lights went out I spent a considerable amount of time praying. While the rock was only a symbol, I had come to accept that it was my burden, and I needed to get rid of it (not just because the burden was keeping me from God, but also because the rock was big and heavy and was leaving chalk dust in the pocket of my jacket). In the morning I went to set the rock down.

On the ride back, for some of the time I was stuck on the floor for some of the time, but it was still better than being stuck sharing a seatbelt with someone. Eventually, though, I was forced into a seat. That wasn’t so bad, though, because I didn’t have to share a seatbelt. I was also very tired, which contributed to the ease of the ride, since I think I slept through a lot of it. Overall, the ride home was enjoyable, and I’m sure I can contribute that to finally getting that burden off my shoulders.

In the end, my spring break was an incredible and life-changing experience. It stretched me beyond my limits and forced me to look at my life in an entirely different way. The week I spent at Camp Eagle made me reevaluate the direction I was heading and how I was getting there. I learned so much – far more than I had originally expected. I think it can be said that Spring Break of my Senior Year was by far the greatest I’ve ever experienced.