Home Sweet Home?

As anyone who has been reading may have noticed, I stopped camp journaling at Day 4, which was due to the flakiness of the wireless internet up at camp. Seems somebody installed a new antenna and nobody was able to connect wirelessly for some reason. So I will be attempting to summarize the last few days once I have had a little time to unpack it all myself.

It hasn't been a terribly easy transition, the coming home. I'm not a person who has a terribly easy time expressing or feeling comfortable with feeling a lot of emotions, but yesterday, and more last night I found myself unable to stop myself (much as I tried) from sobbing, even if I did do my best to hold my friggin breath to stop from sounding like it.

It was hard to say goodbye to the kids yesterday, especially a few of them in particular who I really connected with in a special way, and I'll admit I really felt like breaking down yesterday as they were leaving camp, but I sucked it up. The leaving, itself, was difficult - the routine over the last week is something I have come to depend on. Always somewhere to be and something to be doing, whether it be playing music for the kids or practicing, manning the Zunga (SO much fun), washing pots and pans or whatever else. And now that I'm gone there is a feeling of empty aimlessness.

I come home to find that my beautiful old dog, who my wife and I rescued at the ripe old age of 10, and who has been slowly succumbing to degenerative myelopathy (think of a doggy version of MS or ALS) has been rapidly going downhill in the week since I've been away, and now we have an appointment on monday to have him put down because it has become obvious that he just isn't happy in his own skin anymore. We love our dog, and I know that I personally have had a real struggle with the idea of putting him down because he isn't in any pain - he is just slowly becoming paralyzed. He poops and has now begun peeing on his own bed, or on the kitchen floor, unable to hold it or unaware of the need to due to the lack of feeling in his back-side. For a breed as proud and regal as the GSD, my wife points out, it must be a very shameful thing to go to the bathroom in ones own territory, and with no way to bury it or hide it from potential enemies. In other words, it probably drives him quite nuts. Whenever he does it there is a certain look of deep shame that comes over him, his ears droop down and sometimes he starts to shake as though we are going to yell at him or hit him. We never do, though, and never have, at least not for things like that which are out of his control.

As if that weren't enough, I get back from a week serving God in the best capacity I can think of, by minstering to kids, some of which whom really needed a week to just kick back and be kids and have fun, and also to have some exposure to a God who really loves them and wants them to know that. And what do I find but some hateful, left-leaning atheist creeps saying some really awful, hurtful and baseless accusations about Ron and myself, insinuating (or in Ron's case openly stating) their belief that only a pedophile would be "excited" about spending a week with children. Pardon my french, but WHAT THE FUCK??!! Where does this kind of self-indulgent trash get off saying this sort of thing about people he knows nothing about? I have to wonder what is wrong with a person whose natural assumptions are that all adults who enjoy spending time with children are also out to sexually abuse them. It actually creeps me out quite badly.

So yeah, a lot going on. A lot of really emotionally difficult stuff going on. Usually I have no problem being strong and stuffing it down, but I just feel like I'm being hit on all sides. Anyway, it isn't all bad, just really taxing and draining I guess. I'll write more about camp when I have a chance.