Personal Narrative: A Forty-Foot Jump

Camp is place unlike any other. It is a place that people’s wall begin to fall down and new relationships are formed. This is bound to happen when you drop 200 teenagers in the middle of the Smoky Mountains without any of their electronics. I was lucky enough to be chosen for the Project Serve team and got to see camp from a new perspective. I got to be a part of all of the behind the scenes work, but also daily interactions with all of the campers due to my job at camp. I had been flown 1,500 miles to be a lifeguard for the week. This meant I got to work the blob and see how ministry could be done through telling people to jump off a decently high tower. It’s here where I met Kiera. A forty-foot jump is what separated Kiera from conquering her fear of heights and a soft landing onto the blob. Several times she made her way to the blob tower to watch her friends take the jump and make conversation with me, but she never wanted to make the jump herself. The conversations ranged from snippets of her home life to who had the best Chaco tan line between the two of us. Claims of having taken the jump before and lack of swimwear when she would be atop the blob tower came out in our conversations. It wasn’t hard to see how badly she wanted to do the blob, but there was mental bar preventing her from doing it. For several days this dance went on, Kiera saying she would do it later that day except later never seemed to come. Until the second to last day, when later did come. The hot summer sun of South Carolina in July was beating down on our backs. A thunderstorm had passed through earlier that day and steam seemed to still be rising up from the tops of the trees. The life jackets had been organized from smallest to largest along the blob tower at the beginning of the day, but with free time inching closer to an end, most had found a home on the ground. I had been chatting with several teenagers from Southern Indiana when I saw a certain curly-haired girl making her way down the path to the blob tower. It was Kiera and she was holding a beach towel in her hand. Kiera slowly made her way up the stairs and put on a life jacket with intentionality. She got in line and patiently waited to make it to the front of the line. I wasn’t sure if she was sweating because of the heat or due to nervousness. A quiet determination had overtaken her. I didn’t know if I should actually expect anything from this display of bravery or if it was going to be another failed attempt once she got to the front. I had stopped paying attention to the conversations I had been engaged in before and began to pray. I didn’t simply want Kiera to jump off the blob. I wanted her to see that she could do whatever she set her mind to. I wanted her to understand that her past didn’t define her. Most of all, I wanted her to know that she was not who other people had made her to be, but she was the person who God had made her to be. I hadn’t looked back since before I …show more content…
You see, I had been in Kiera’s position not so long ago. I knew what it felt like to be told I wasn’t good enough, that because of my past God couldn’t use me, especially not in a ministry setting. All it took was one person to pour truth and words of affirmation into me for me to realize the plans the Lord had for me. I wanted so badly for Kiera to hear this message and I knew by the end of the week that she had. Kiera’s entire demeanor had changed and she was beginning to throw away her fears. She no longer believed everything negative that others were saying about her, but was starting to see all the potential that she possessed. As soon as Kiera said yes and went under the water, she became a new creation. Nothing from her past mattered