Whining, Complaining, and Bitterness-Everything You've Come To Expect From A Vacation With Sarah Johnson

It was not my idea to attend this conference. I had several places I would rather be. Six, actually. Let me list them for you.

• Going to the Governor's Honors Program, a FREE six-week-camp available to rising juniors and seniors in which promising students from around the state are packed off to a college campus to learn about writing with like-minded peers. I've dreamed about doing this since I found about it in 5th grade. I couldn't go because one of the weeks was during the conference. It will probably be cancelled next year because the state of Pennsylvania is in massive debt.*
• Alpha Fantasy/Sci-Fi Writer's Camp. Once again, couldn't go because it was scheduled for the same week as the conference.
• Young Life Camp. Young Life is this awesome Bible study thing that I've been involved with for the past few months. Young Life Camp is guaranteed to be the best week of your life or your money back. It was on the same week. I had to sit through three months of talk and pictures about how awesome Young Life Camp is while Kelly and Dallas tried to entice everybody else to go.
  
• Black-belt camp. I went once two years ago and loved it. I wanted to go again. Guess what weekend it fell on.
• A trip to Rehobath Beach with Elijah. This one hasn't yet come to pass--they leave for the beach a few days after the end of the conference--but Mom said we probably won't make it back to the North before they leave.

Embittered? Me? No. But wait--it gets better.

Elijah and I are both pretty high up in tae kwon do. I'm a black belt, he's some convoluted belt that he assured me was pretty close to the top. So, to see who was superior, we decided to have a no-contact sparring match.

Bad idea, as it turns out. No-contact sparring is very safe in most aspects, but there is the danger that both of you will kick at the same time. We both kicked at the same time. Crunch. It didn't hurt so bad at first (remember, I made it out of black belt camp with only light contusions) but by the next morning, my entire pinkie toe was bruised black and red and swollen and most definitely broken. Because I am stupid, this did not stop me from going to a carnival the next night and walking around for an hour, then walking the two and a half miles to the car. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

All I'm going to say is, God is in control. He knows everything I ever wanted to do in the summer would fall onto the one week it could never happen. He knows I'm going to go into a service project with a limp and a broken toe. He knows I am not looking forward to this trip. So He must have something really awesome in store for me on this trip. If not, I will seriously doubt the benevolence of God.

Just kidding. Don't have a heart attack, Pastor Craig.

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*Fun fact--my best friend got accepted and had no ELCA obligation to hold her back. Every time I've talked to her in the last four weeks, she's regaled me with tales of how amazing the classes have been, how cool the people are, and how surrealistically awesome the whole experince is.