*This was written for an SCWC essay about love – and I’m sharing it here for my Al’s birthday. Love you, sweet friend.*

I laughingly say I’ve become a Swiftie in my old age because I was very late to the party, but one of my favorite Taylor songs is “Invisible Strings,” as it presents the sweetest picture of unseen threads drawing two people towards each other through all of life’s circumstances unbeknownst to them until later.

In the same way, I see these invisible strings tied to my favorite place in the world, Camp Sumatanga, and all the love I feel for it and the love it has helped wrap my life in.

When I was 17, Alan, one of the directors of elementary camp each summer at Camp Sumatanga, a beautiful Methodist church camp in Gallant, Alabama, invited me and a few other students he had chosen from my school to be counselors. Having been a longtime camper at a girls church camp growing up, I was very excited to go be a counselor at a kid’s camp – and the minute I arrived in the lodge on Saturday to get ready for campers the following Monday, I knew this was my place.

Walking around the lodge and getting moved into my little room in the North Hall, it just felt right.

That very day, as we would all load up into cars to drive to the top of the mountain to the chapel (the only time folks ever drive – usually it is a one mile hike straight up Chandler Mountain) for everyone to see the stunning view from the top and pray, I would hop in the car with my new friends, Mark and Shaun, both program directors at camp, having no idea how important to my life the invisible string between Shaun and I would be later.

I was a counselor for two wonderful summers at Sumatanga, with groups of campers who are forever dear to my heart, in a place that I can only describe as magical. Everything from its main lodge with its old school halls and rooms and bunk beds, to the big fireplace surrounded by rocking chairs at night, to walking around the lake and taking in the surrounding beauty, to the incomparable feeling of hiking to the chapel and then breathing in the view from the top. . . there is no place like Sumatanga.

After my counselor days had passed and I was grown and had children of my own, I was walking through a more challenging time of my life when I found my way to Hueytown First United Methodist Church. My children and I had not been attending long at all when church retreat time rolled around and our new friends encouraged us to come spend the weekend – at Camp Sumatanga.

I could not believe it. As I said, this was a difficult time and my children were small – but I packed up, and off we went. From this invisible string drawing me back to camp for that first retreat weekend, I cannot begin to say what all I gained that would stay with me always.

In addition to getting to show my children my favorite place, this was the weekend that I first started to really get to know my Cheryl and Al, two ladies who would become my best friends, and I cannot imagine my life without them – Sumatanga strings straight through my heart. Throughout the entire weekend I got to know many church members better, including several friends who are no longer with us, It was a precious time.

As my life circumstances were improving, one of those Sumatanga invisible strings reshaped my entire life in the most beautiful way. I mentioned meeting my friend Shaun the first day I arrived at camp. It happened that around that same age, he met his fraternity brother Courtney. Over the years, Shaun and I – and many of our Sumatanga friends – remained friends and kept up on social media. However, it would be another 16 or so years from all of our first meetings before he would introduce Courtney and me to each other at his mother’s house during an Alabama football weekend. 

Courtney is now my husband and the love of my life, an invisible string that I am forever grateful for. There aren’t enough words.

Before Sumatanga church retreat weekends came to an end, our friend group went on several more that we treasure and Courtney was able to come join in all the Sumatanga good things as well.

I look back now at our pictures and think of those trips, to our people. Our friend group has endured several absolutely devastating losses – and so I am grateful for the years that we were all together, the Sumatanga strings that kept us all close, and then also for the strings that hold us all now, of love and friendship and shared memories and devotion.

I can’t imagine the tapestry of my life without all of my Sumatanga strings. Camp – being the extraordinary place that it is – holds so many precious parts of my story and has seen my life wrapped in much love – and it is in my heart forever.

Sometimes love is a place too.