Karolina

“My parents made fun of me for being a Christian until I wanted to kill myself.” These are the words of a fourteen-year-old girl in the Czech Republic.

It’s the last week of camp. This week is dedicated to youth in a middle school age range from about 11-15 years old. There is something raw and unfiltered in the air. A wildness hovering on the fringes of a very structured and supervised camp program. Old friendships are reestablished and new alliances hastily forged over awkward mealtimes. Adolescents roam in packs, publicly cloistered bubbles of security, shielding them from whatever unspoken or imagined humiliation will inevitably befall them if ever forced to walk alone. As the week wears on, so does the grime of unwashed t-shirts donned daily in the sweltering heat. Chapel times become nearly unbearable, as the 90-degree humid boil of the day mingles with over a hundred sweaty bodies packed tightly into the converted barn meeting room. Pitchers of water and plastic drinking cups now adorn the aisles to avoid last week’s debacle, in which several campers suffered heat strokes in chapel, and ambulances were dispatched to administer IV hydration and emergency care.

It is a welcome reprieve that Thursday is campfire chapel. We will meet outdoors around the firepit, where primitive hewn halved logs lie flat side up, braced by notched blocks encircling the fire. Yet, they are too few to seat everyone, so we staff will borrow deck chairs from around the pool and schlepp them up the steep hillside like faltering sherpas. It’s a mercy really, as the logs are sufficient seating for young and able bodies, but a device of affliction for all of us over forty.

After some worship songs, the campers are invited to share testimonies of their week at camp, spiritual decisions they’ve made, or whatever is on their heart. One girl shares her testimony believing in Jesus a few years ago. A boy comes forward and confesses that he was reading the Satanic Bible this year, a common theme I’ve noticed this summer. Occult practices are flourishing in spiritual darkness. Now it’s Karolina’s turn.

Karolina, or “Kaja” as anyone with this name goes by, is outwardly brimming with all the painful awkwardness one might imagine from a middle school girl struggling against her age, plus a few degrees more. Perhaps most notable is the mop of blue hair she wears in ungainly waves that roll first outward and then down toward the nape of her neck. It is neither short nor long, but she is identifiable wherever she is, because one does not even have to see her face to know it is her. She has become well-known among both staff and campers this week, perhaps because of the blue hair, but also because of her boyish clothes and moody demeanor.

She gathers herself behind the microphone. When she begins, her sentences are so rapid and stream of consciousness, I find it hard to keep up. It’s like she’s talking without taking breaths, and she has no lack of words, for there are no pauses. Like a spigot whose valve has spun off, or a dam unleashed, the full force of her words come in a shocking and disorienting flow. She got saved last year at camp, but it has been the worst year of her life. She is bullied at school and has no friends. She felt so outcasted at school, she began wondering what was wrong with her, and thought maybe she was a boy. So she cut her hair short and tried to be one, which only brought more shame, and the bad style we all understand more fully now. Last year when she got home from camp, she was so excited to tell people about what Jesus had done in her heart. Her parents ridiculed her and told her she was stupid and a fool for believing such things. The opinion was echoed at school among her already mostly estranged classmates and teachers. She had lost hope at ever fitting in. Her parents were unrelenting in their abuses. “My parents made fun of me for being a Christian until I wanted to kill myself.” With this statement the tears, which have been falling in steady streams, become sobs. “I’m so alone,” she cries. But also with this statement, some invisible door has been unhinged, as a dozen or so girls rush to the front and gather around her, embracing her in their arms. They huddle, pressing in as if staving off a bitter cold. What’s notable to me, is that it’s not just the other moody girls with nose piercings and black fingernails who have come to be her consolation. It’s the pretty ones, the trendy and popular ones too. Kaja, like a swarmed pop star performing a concert, continues her testimony re-energized into the microphone, as the girls link arms and form a chain. More trauma and pain pour out, but it’s difficult for me to comprehend it all now through the sobs and broken cadence. She will continue for at least another ten minutes with her tale. As she does, a few more girls spring from their seats and join the chain of linked girls, as if this were some alternative altar call. In a way, it is. Kaja, though her trauma is likely more intense than most who stand with her, has struck a nerve. Her tales of woe are not only hers. The aloneness she testifies, resonates deeply.

In Cari and I’s individual mentoring sessions, this theme is the repeated confession and confidence shared throughout the summer. Both campers and staff have a prevailing experience of loneliness in their faith. It is the common trial for Czech believers. Some feel it more intensely than others. Many come from provincial villages where they are indeed the only believer, and their loneliness is manifestly real. Others live in big cities and attend larger churches, but even so, it is likely they are the only believer in their class at school, and only see other Christians when they gather on Sundays, but few will be their peers. They endure a world hostile to their faith in their daily lives. They experience a desertion and marginalization that is dissonant with their spiritual life in Christ.

Many of us have had camp experiences, “spiritual highs” in the context of a unique retreat atmosphere, where God did a work in our hearts and minds. But this is something more. Something happens at this camp that can happen at no other time. There is an alignment of their daily experience and their spiritual life. They enjoy community and fellowship and acceptance that mirrors their unity with Christ. Their solitude is broken and their souls are restored. This place is sacred. Not because these facilities stand on some holy ground, but because God meets with them here in a way unknown and impossible anywhere else.

It’s Friday. Fridays are hard for me to watch. Parents drive the long lane carved through dense forest and brush to park along the watershed stream that runs the length of the camp. Their arrival breaks the mirage of safe seclusion, and campers gather in their packs, willing away the reality that the week is done. As parents unregister their children and try to wrangle them into the parked cars, the campers linger with hugs, tears, and promises to keep in touch. So many, like Kaja, will return to villages with no church and no kindred. Counselors have given them their contact information, we’ve made recommendations for churches, youth groups, or conferences that may be near enough for them to visit. We pray that they will survive the year and maybe we will see them again the next. We’re sending not sheep, but little lambs, back into the unrelenting and unforgiving wilds, alone and exposed. It is heart-wrenching.

If you’re still reading this, pray for the girl with the shock of blue hair, and so many young Czechs like her, whose young faith hangs by a thread, yet secure in the Father’s hand.