stick tight. motivate. have no conflict.

30 weeks.

Minutes before I'm supposed to report back for work today, I feel the need to talk about standards.

Before each activity, whether it be walking down trails or going into the classroom, my kids are required to set standards for that activity. So many times, my boys will just ramble out the right words, knowing if they don't say exactly what it is that we are looking for, we will sit there until the right standards are set.

Before we leave anywhere, you'll hear a chief say, "Someone set standards for trails." Immediately, the response is given, "Stick tight. Motivate. Have no conflict." Sometimes I wish the boys would actually listen to the standards they give before moving. Much of my personal growth has come from listening to the standards set by my kids. Standards, not only for trails, but for life.

Stick tight.

Stick with the group. Don't stray from the boundaries. Keep close to the people who know you, who can protect you. If you wander, no one can support you if something goes wrong. If you are within view, no one can accuse you of doing something you had no part of. Surround yourself with a community of people who understand the life journey you're on. We were not created to live alone--we were created to live united.

Motivate.

My favorite standard--Motivate. Walk with a purpose. Walk with a destination in mind. Walk as if something you care about is at the end of the trail. Take initiative. Be determined. Have ambition. Don't let life happen to you, but grab life by the reins, and live it as if it's yours to live.

Have no conflict.

Peace. Peace between you and the person in front of and behind you. Peace between you and the leadership you follow, those who follow your leadership. Peace between you and the trees. The foundation of peaceful living is communication. If there's one thing I've learned in my 24 years of life, it's this: Communication is everything. I said recently to someone I care about, "God gave me many gifts, but mind reading is not one of them." This goes for everyone. Conflict is avoided by communicating--communicating with one another, with Mother Nature, with our own spirit, and with the spirit of God.

So as I march back into the woods this morning, I'm clinging to these standards, hoping that they will lead me in the right direction in the coming months.

Happy 7 month Campiversary to me.

surviving...or something like it.

28 weeks.

My six-month campiversary has come and gone, and so has the six-month wall to accompany it.

I can feel myself drifting from the excitement and commitment I had back in January, and as I reach out to those who know and love me, I'm feeling a surge of support that has never wavered but continues to surprise me. The support that comes from my loved ones is unconditional, but there has been and continues to be a hint of "get out of there now!" that comes alongside their steady hands of guidance and love.

I'm starting to feel that same need for escape. I can't decide what is actually fueling it. There are multiple reasons. One might be the weather. I'm constantly sweating and itching. I can't get away from the heat or the bugs. One might be the staff. The numbers of gainfully employed crazies at camp are dwindling, and it doesn't seem like anything is being done to rehabilitate the program. One might be the kids. I'm running out of interest in riding the roller coaster of emotion that comes with every success and failure of ten different kids. When one kid is doing well, there is surely another who can't get his act together. When one kid has a problem, they all seem to get jealous and throw their own problem. It's exhausting, and just at the moment when I feel like I can't take it anymore, one kid decides it's all my fault and throws a giant "f*** you!" in my face.

Another might be the call to something next to normal. I've found some peace and love in my time off lately, and it's something I've come to long for while I'm working. I've come to appreciate the value of an 8 to 5 job for what it offers you as an individual. Nights and weekends. Freedom to grocery shop, to cook, to clean, to write, to play, to love, to be. Things I miss and need in my life.

I read this quote the other day that hit home:

People should not worry as much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works. - The Eckhart Society

I have spent my whole life saying that I wanted to have the hardest work in the hardest places with the hardest people. I don't want to give up on that, but I also don't want it to come at the sacrifice of the beautiful parts of me.

I'm surviving...or something like it, but to be sure, I've got some thinking to do.

justice shmustice.

25 weeks.


*Lydia drags soapbox from backstage left to stage front. Lydia proceeds to stand on soapbox.*

I am a little disenchanted with the justice system these days. Justice is based on truth, reason, and fairness, but what I've experienced and what these kids experience is neither true, reasonable or fair.


Last week, I spent two and a half hours in a court room filled with people who are still receiving continuances for crimes committed in November 2009 -- selling/manufacturing/possessing drugs, driving without licenses, alcohol abuse, etc. I sat there with a teenage boy who assaulted me 2 months ago. Upon pressing the charge, I was given a subpoena to appear in court on June 28 at 9:30 am. I showed up. I brought him with me. Two and a half hours later, our case still hasn't been addressed. I walk up to the woman leading the session after the long line of perpetrators finish their hearings. Oh, I'm sorry. What is his name again? Yeah, I see now. He's not on my list. Let's look it up in the computer. Hm...it looks as if the warrant has not even been served yet. You'll need to go talk to the D.A. and figure this out.


I'm usually full of patience, but I nearly lost my cool as my mind flashed back to the same month that I pressed the charge on this kid. I received a parking ticket about 1 minute after driving up to the Wal-Mart door to pick up my co-worker. Apparently, I was in a fire lane, and fire lanes are a big deal around these parts. 30 minutes later (thank God there wasn't a fire!) I was on my way with a court date 3 DAYS LATER. Obviously, I couldn't make it since I work 5 days a week, 24 hours a day, so I spend the next three days diligently calling the court asking to take care of it another way. The ticket wasn't even processed until a week later, so once again, if I would have shown up on that court date--nothing would have happened.

This whole dramatic world I've created has made me a bit self-righteous. Allow me a few moments to spin my wheels, if you will. I promise not to go on for too long.

I spend a whole heck of of a lot of time teaching the kids of North Carolina (one of the forerunners in child abuse, neglect, and teenage pregnancies, mind you) how to behave responsibly. These kids are passed down from these same courts that treat their court rooms like a cattle call---line 'em up, brand 'em, and move 'em along, but save one or two for the finale.

My words of wisdom for Elizabethtown and its sister cities: Get it together, and get your priorities straight. The time you spend trying to get as much money as possible from your citizens is taking away from the time you should be spending teaching your children how to live decent lives. Instead of making traffic citations a big deal, how about you make violence a big deal? Instead of ticketing me for pausing momentarily to pick up a friend in a mostly empty parking lot, how about you head down to the local McDonalds and teach your children how to get a real job instead of selling drugs in the drive-thru? How about you teach your children what it's like to live in a world based on truth, reason, and fairness?

*Lydia steps down from soapbox, and drags it back off the stage.*

my tree of life.

About a month before my college graduation, I asked my dad how he felt about me getting a tattoo before heading to the PeaceCorps the following summer. He basically told me he would kill me if I ever got a tattoo.

Fast forward 2 and a half years to last night when my dad accompanied me to Superchango Tattoo for my first tattoo. Inspired by the contents of from the forest comes life, I tattooed the "Tree of Life" on my inner left ankle. When I asked my dad again a few weeks ago about getting a tattoo, he said he approved on one condition: that he could be with me when I got it done. Deal. In the parking lot before we left, I had a chance to tell my dad precisely how grateful I am for him.

Growing up, I was a big-time Daddy's girl. I remember signing all of his birthday and Father's Day cards, "To Daddy Waddy from Wydia Wudy." I remember learning to read Green Eggs and Ham on his lap in our living room on Kury Lane. I remember all the baseball, softball, and basketball teams of mine he coached. I remember swinging practice in our lawn and catching drills on my knees in the dirt. Sometime in my teenage years, things started to change between my dad and me. We'd argue more often as my interests no longer aligned with his strengths as a father. Before we could recover from the downswing in our relationship, my parents filed for divorce.

A flood of thoughts, feelings, emotions, misunderstandings, and lies take over a child's mind during a divorce. All of my negative thoughts and feelings about my dad intensified during the divorce. Coupled with my dad's thoughts and feelings (which I won't go into given he's not here to defend or explain his side of the story), we dug our heels in and spent the next six years fighting for and against, for and against, for and against a healthy and lasting relationship. There were moments where he was ready to give up, moments where I was ready to throw in the towel. God never threw in the towel, though, and he and I both can testify to that grace and persistence being the reason I can write this blog today--a story of gratitude.

It is obvious to me which of my campers don't have a consistent and loving father figure in their life. They are the ones who are automatically repulsed by female authority figures, the ones who are too hard for their own good, the ones who don't understand how to give and receive love and respect. They are the ones who sit by and watch as a female gets threatened and assaulted. They are the ones who will graduate the program and still have miles to walk before they experience healing.

If I worked with girls right now, this may even hit closer to home, but the simple knowledge that the consistent factor in each of these boys' lives is the lack of a father at home stops me dead in my tracks. I can write for days about the hardships that my dad and I have been through. I can outline each negative obstacle we've faced and tackled. On the flip side, I can write out every single good deed he has done for me and for others, highlighting the generosity and caring nature of my dad. But today, I am grateful mostly for the small things. For the gift of an active and present father, I am eternally grateful.

So to you, Papa Bear. Thank you.

Thank you for being there even when it got hard, for coaching me to be strong, to stand up for what is right, to never quit when faced with a challenge.

Thank you for never giving up on me, for always supporting and providing for me, for teaching me how to support and provide for myself.

Thank you for taking the life you were handed and changing your stars, so that mine could be brighter.

Each day with you on my team is an example to me of God's love, grace, and persistence. Each day is proof to me that God is still working miracles and hope that miracles are being worked in the lives of my campers.

You and Mom are the roots of my Tree of Life--no matter how far those roots spread apart, they are still a solid foundation for the reach of my branches.

you were given life.

23 weeks.

You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight. Eat, Pray, Love; Elizabeth Gilbert

I think it is a testament to the dramatic shift in dynamics at my job that I can come home to Texas with a smile on my face and can laugh at the stories I tell to my family about my kids and the craziness at camp. I feel like I've done a really steady job of maintaining a positive mindframe about my work--seeing the bad and finding the good on daily basis, being intentional about wrapping everything up nicely with a positive spin. Obviously, some weeks are harder than others, and there was a solid 8-week stint of tough times that had my entire family wrecked with worry about what in the world I was getting myself into at this camp.

My mom asked me yesterday to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how glad I was that I made the decision to go to this camp. I told her a 9, and she looked shocked. Her next words were, "I was ready to fly back up to North Carolina with you at the end of your stay and pack your things if there was any piece of you that looked unhealthy." Instead of looking unhealthy, she said I looked great. As much as I struggle with a number of things at camp, I'm happy there. Especially with my new group. I feel safe finally, and that is really all it took for me to begin to enjoy my job again. Safety was the ticket for my happiness to come back, my laughter instead of tears.

All but one of my kids went home this weekend, and I went home too. Much deserved on all parts, I believe.

In Eat, Pray, Love, there's a moment in Italy where the author has a conversation about how every city has a word that defines it, and that most people who live there also fit that definition. For example, Rome's would be SEX, and Naples would be FIGHT. She starts to try to identify her word, so that she can identify where she belongs. I found that profound--that we can all sum ourselves up into one word. Maybe mine is LOVE or DEVOTION, ADVENTURE or FREEDOM. I'm not sure. I feel that those are so...mushy, that they don't give testament to the darker parts of me that aren't always visible.

I think I'll spend the next few days in Texas trying to figure out what my word is...and maybe I'll find a place one day that is my match.

summertime lamentations

22 weeks.

I admit it. I am in complete shock at this turn of events. Honestly, I never would have guessed it or seen it coming. I predicted it all wrong and underestimated my strengths and weaknesses. I am utterly disappointed in myself.

I am going to be MISERABLE this summer!!!!

In preparation for my move to North Carolina in January, I dreaded the winter. I worried myself sick and asked everyone how to prepare, what to expect, what I should do, how I could survive the sub-freezing temperatures, the snow and the ice. Hailing from Texas, I thought that I'd be fine in the heat. I've lived in triple-digit summers for 23 years. I know heat. I know humidity.

Insert foot in mouth.

Dear Reader, please allow this lamentation for once--I must whine myself to sleep tonight, for I am dreadfully hot.

I sleep under a bug net where it's now too hot for a sleeping bag. I wear all my clothes to bed because I don't have the privacy to wear anything with less coverage than cargo pants and a t-shirt. I go to sleep sweating and wake up sweating (now, I know for some of you, this sweating thing may not come as a surprise. I've always been man-like in my sweating, but friends, dear friends, you ain't seen nothin' like this before). If I don't keep covered by clothes, I'll instead be covered in mosquito bites. I sweat all day toting around a filing cabinet in my book bag (metaphor stolen from my co-worker, Gary--but now that I think about it, he'll never read this, so let's just say I'm clever enough to have made that up on my own) and a medical satchel. I shower once a day, but usually it's mid-day, so I sweat in the shower and sweat trying to get dressed.

I am in a constant state of sweaty!!

Oh, but it gets worse. It's only June 11. Summer hasn't even begun. The triple-digits mock me as they paw the dirt waiting for release from Seasonal Purgatory.

And the bugs. Oh, the bugs. If it rains, it cools down the temperature, but brings out the bugs. What kind of trade off is that?!? If there really is a moment where I can ask God one thing, I may just ask him why we must sacrifice our bodies to the bugs in order to get a reprieve from the heat. I know we are called to be "living sacrifices" (Romans 12), but really, God? Really? Mosquitoes, Horse Flies, and Yellow Flies? Really?

Heat rashes. Bug bites and stings. Swollen appendages due to bug bites and stings. Living in constant fear of being attacked by campers and bugs.

I am a masochist. It is official. I'm really enjoying the beach and lake time I'm getting when I'm not working. I might actually get a good tan this year for the first time in a long...well...ever. That tan will be hard to see, though, behind the red bumpiness of my arms and legs. My oh my, this may be the longest summer of my life. 3 months might feel more like a decade this time around.

the house that built me

About an hour away from where I live now is the architect who designed my childhood home.


Set back on three acres on the shores of Indigo Lake in the woods of Magnolia, TX, my childhood home was captivating. A 2-story, white, Greek revival home with a lovely front porch and a back porch that looked out on green grass, tall pines, and lined up perfectly with the moon's reflection on the water, this house was the house where I wanted to get married and the home I wanted my kids to visit on long weekends with their grandparents.


My parents divorced at the beginning of my junior year of high school. My mom moved off first to Montgomery, TX then to Austin, TX, and has now recently returned to Montgomery. My dad stayed in that house until about 3 years ago, waiting for the right person and right time to sell. He now lives part-time in The Woodlands, TX and part-time on his boat.


Nearly a year and a half ago, I went back with a few friends from Dallas to Magnolia for an Ultimate tournament to support a child in my former youth group who needed medical assistance after falling out of a tree, resulting in paralysis of his legs. After the tournament, I drove my friends through my hometown, sharing stories of my childhood adventures and misadventures. We ended up at the same spot where I'd wait for the school bus, outside the gate where our family dog would run to get the newspaper each morning--the same dog we buried behind the garage that stood just a few hundred feet behind the iron gate where I now stood. I took a chance and pushed in the code to open the gate of my past...and it worked! The gate opened, and I drove in not really knowing why or what I was expecting.


Give me just a minute, guys. I need to at least try.


I knocked on the door and introduced myself to the woman who answered. Hi, this may be strange, but my name is Lydia Rudy. I grew up here.


She immediately invited me in.


A friend of mine recently told me that I would like Miranda Lambert's song House that Built Me. Listening to it on the radio today, I heard my own story from a year and a half ago:


I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing
Out here it's like I'm someone else
I thought that maybe I could find myself
If I could just come in I swear I'll leave
Won't take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me


My mom sent me an email this week with the writings of Jill Carattini called The Right Side of Pain. In it, Carattini talks about how she spent a good portion of her life after her family fell apart reaching out to the broken and the hurting, the poor and the helpless, in an effort to make sure that no one felt alone in their hurting like she did when she was hurting. She bounced from community to community after she felt like she had done all she could, given all she had, exhausted her love and resources. She concluded by saying that where she went wrong was when she invited the broken into her house--a metaphorical house that was built on her own strength, a house that had yet to be fixed, a house that was not ready for company. She instead needed to begin inviting those same people into the house of God:


...A house built not by human hands, but held up by the beams of the cross. Here our souls find a house with rooms prepared for them and a table set with room for our enemies. God has invited us into the kingdom; the doors of a great house are opened wide. And it is a house where hospitality is not a conditional sharing of personal pains, or a self-centered preoccupation with suffering, but an extension of Christ's invitation: Come to me, all who are weary and I will give you rest.


I'm the type of person who carries her hurt with her wherever she goes. Before moving to North Carolina, I spent two years learning how to let go of the hurt and find strength in the vulnerability that came with letting go. Unlike Carattini, I've been drawn to helping people since I was a child. I once told my mom that I wanted to travel to the hardest places to do the hardest work. Still, I find myself seeking out those opportunities and wanting to flee when it got too hard. Lately, I've been wanting to flee from this camp, from the hardest boys and run to a safer camp in Georgia where it might be easier.

After a week of deep consideration and a week with a new group of boys, I've decided not to flee this time and to stay at my camp in North Carolina. Starting over with a fresh perspective, I need to let go of the house I've built around me and start living in the house of God, so that I can invite these kids into a stable home, one that won't fall apart around them, one that hold plenty of room for me and for them.