Looks Like Her Dream is Coming True

I took Elizabeth to Cran-Hill Ranch on Sunday.

She's going to be a camp counselor there this summer and has two weeks of orientation before the first group of campers arrive. I was a counselor at Cran-Hill in 1991 and 1992, and am so stinkin' excited for my daughter. For the fun she'll have, the lives she'll touch, and the ways she is going to experience God.
It is going to be a summer like none she has ever had before. And I am thrilled for her.
I really am.
But I'm also a little sad.
See, for the past nine years I have taken Elizabeth to Cran-Hill - for a week of summer camp. And, always, at the end of the week I have picked her up and listened to story after story of the adventures she had at the Ranch. But Sunday when we checked in at the office I said to Mal (the camp director), "I'm giving her to you for a whole summer this time. Take good care of her."
Then we hugged and I prayed for her and we said our good-byes. And I got in the van to come home. Excited for the summer ahead of her, but saddened by the reality that she won't be home again until August 17. And will be going back to college on the 24th.
Elizabeth already has plans to spend next summer studying in another state, and the following summer she hopes to do an internship somewhere else. If all goes as planned, she'll be graduated and "on her own" the summer after that. Who knows if we'll even have the pleasure of her company for a total of four weeks in the next two summers, like we are this year?

All through her growing up years, Elizabeth spoke of a desire to have wings. She always thought it would be so wonderful to be able to fly wherever she wanted to go. If only she could grow a pair of wings.
The strange thing is, when I looked at Elizabeth walking away as I left camp on Sunday, I think I saw wings sprouting from her back.