Hoffnung Siegt

"And in the end, when all Hope is lost, it will be the Forgotten ones that shall prevail and save us all." -The Forgotten

Tomorrow, I will journey across the state of Kansas to a place that many have never heard of, but a place that has forever changed me because of my time there. I will reunite with friends that I only see once a year, and we will sit patiently as we flip through page after page of a simple notebook that we all see every year at this time. On the front of this notebook is the stamp of the American Cancer Society, and directly above that, etched in the familiar font are the words, "Camp Hope."

I always get the question, "How in the world do you do that?" The that to which I am referring to is Camp Hope. This may seem like a normal camp on the outside, but upon closer inspection, you find something completely different. Camp Hope is a camp for children who have had, or who are currently battling some form of cancer. 2011 will mark my 4th year at camp, and I have loved every minute of it.

I know the first thing you probably think of is, "Geez, that camp must be horrible." Yeah, in a way it is. It is horrible because you wish you didn't have camps like that, and in a perfect world, we wouldn't. But, despite what they tell us, we are not living in a perfect world. Even though it is tough going to the camp knowing what those kids have been through, there is also a beauty throughout the camp that you never thought would be possible. As I look at those kids, still smiling through it all, you can't help but stop and thank God for the life you have.

Because of this, I have found something in myself that allows me to keep going back to camp year after year. Sometimes I have to dig down really deep to find some semblance of a human being, but somehow, it is always there. I am able to do camp because the laughter heard there trumps the heartache I feel every year. It is hard, I will be the first to admit that. But it is on the days when you are so tired and emotionally drained from everything that you truly find the person you are meant to be. It is in those moments that I realize that the only two things we really have in this world are faith and hope. As long as you have those two things on your side, you will never lose.

I have a tattoo on my wrist in German that says the words, "Hoffnung Siegt." In English, it means, "Hope Prevails, or Hope Always Wins." I don't really get around to telling people the story of why I got the tattoo, but I have that tattoo through a combination of camp and my book. I had gone to camp for 2 years when I started my book, but I always knew hope would be a huge part of my story line. Three years later, things haven't changed much. The tattoo serves as a constant reminder to me that even when things seem at there worst, and nothing in this world can make it better, we always have hope. It is the one thing on this Earth that cannot be taken from us. The world can beat us down until we don't think there is anything left, but if you dig deep enough, we can find enough hope to pull ourselves back up to rejoin the fight.

And we all know, hope always wins.

Joy Is Just A Patio Away

I have the greatest family in the world. Yeah, yeah, I know, you have the greatest family in the world. But really, I love my family with all my heart, and I couldn't ask for a better one. I always relish the time that I get to spend with them, even when we are taking on a monumental project.

So monumental might be too dramatic of a word to use here.

This past weekend, my family and I built a patio for my Mom's 50th birthday. A patio, NOT a deck. You may ask what the difference between the two is. Honestly, I do not know. I just keep telling people that one has bricks and the other has wood. We assembled the brick one. And by we, I mean my Uncle assembled it. The rest of us just sort of stood around watching him, wondering if there was anything we could do. I mean, we helped. Everyone needs moral support, right?

At one point, my mother brings out a box and says, "We have a slip-n-slide if you want to get it out!" Now, what you have to understand is that my mom is the kind of person that has some of the most random things in her house that you don't think you would ever use, but one day, you may just have a need for it. Ergo, the slip-n-slide. Naturally, we bust this thing out and I decide to go first. As a child, I had a traumatic incident with a slip-n-slide that involved a combination of too little water on the slide and my cheetah-like speed not mixing well.... But, thankfully, I slid gracefully through the water, followed closely by my other cousins having a go.

Eventually, we made it back to the patio. The thing about my family is that while we definitely know how to have a good time, we also know how to buckle down and get the job done. In under 12 hours, we had built a substantial patio in the backyard. If we hadn't of ran out of bricks, who knows what could've happened. As we stood on our work, covered in dirt from head to tow, bodies aching from the long day of work (I think mine was because of the slip-n-slide go...), I couldn't help but love those people just a little more. My family may be completely nuts at times, but that doesn't change the fact that they are my family.

I think what I am trying to say here isn't just a message about family. I think that ultimately, I learned that with life, you have to find joy in the smallest of things. We spend so much of our time working, and we don't take the time to have fun every once in a while. We only have one life to live, so we might as well live it up.

So go find your slip-n-slide.