Girls Camp IE Miracle Camp!

I believe in Miracles. I believe in small miracles that slowly saturate our lives. I try to recognize these small miracles but sometimes they are hard to recognize until time has passed. Other miracles are more obvious and overt. I want to tell you about some of our miracles lately associated with my daughter's LDS Girls Camp. My sweet girl, Peekaboo, is a handful and a half (maybe even three quarters). She's never been easy or easy going. She has always challenged everything in every way. This past year she has been refusing to attend church or even participate in anything religious (any religion). She's been defiant and unappreciative of the love that surrounds her at home and at church. It's been hard. Her father and I have had our hearts broken so many times that we began to wonder how they could possibly break again, but they did. In the Spring Peekaboo announced that she would not repeat NOT attend Girls Camp this year. Her intent was to do NOTHING all summer long. All of the alarm bells sounded in my head. This was not good. ( Church camp was not the only thing she refused to participate in ) She was shutting out good things in her life (church, vollunteer work, exercise). As a parent it was frightening to see your child shut off like that. I pleaded with her to change her mind. My pleading only provoked long drawn out arguments where I was accused of trying to control her...end of discussion. I tried everything I could think of and got such negative responses that eventually I just had to quit. In the begining of June we were at church and miraculously our daughter was along. She and a friend run up to me and thrust papers in my face and triumphantly say "We're going to Girls Camp!" I think I may have sung part of the Hallelujia chorus in the hallway of church. I ran home and signed those permission slips post haste and e-mailed them directly to the people who needed them...I was not letting her back out. I expected her to change her mind back and gripe, but she didn't, if anything her attitude improved. At one point I took her out shopping for a bathing suit, a taxing expedition under any conditions- add onto that the fact that we needed to find a modest bathing suit that would suit our modesty rules and the camps and we had a potential war on our hands. She kept looking at and picking up suits that were not ok with me and she'd look at me longingly and then put them down. I stuck to my guns and several hours later as we were about to stop we found THEM, multiple good choices...MULTIPLE!!!! Can you say Miracle, all were on sale, all were in our budget range and all of them she loved. I actually cried in the dressing room because I knew that God loves my girl.
So, this week she finally went to camp. She went without tons of makeup. She went in a positive mood. She participated in ALL (well, almost all) of the pre-camp prep activities. She went, she had a good time, she came home with hundreds of usable pictures and she came home happy. To me that is the Miracle. A happy child.