Anticipation

I drove the boys and two of their 4H friends up to WV on Saturday. It is time for 4H camp here in Taylor County, and they are EXCITED!!! This is their third year to attend. There isn't a big, fabulous pool, or air conditioned cabins, no cable or internet, no special experiments or national speakers, but they really love this camp. Why? The people. Plain and Simple.
I was supposed to drop them off about 4 pm on Sunday afternoon, and at 3 pm I told them they could start walking. They walked 3 1/2 miles before I got to them an hour later. They never stopped talking from the time I picked them up until the time I dropped them off. All four, all at once, talking over each other, at each other, to each other, and maybe to not any one in particular. I thought I would go crazy!
#2 was sitting in the front seat with me. "Are we there yet? ... How much further?... I thought it was closer than this. ...Are you sure you didn't miss it?" Oh how I remember that. I was sitting in the station wagon with my mom saying the same things about thirty years ago. And then, when camp was over and we left, I remember saying, "Well camp isn't that far away after all, is it?"
It was the first time I understood anticipation. I was so looking forward to this special place and time, and it just couldn't come soon enough.
You know they didn't act this way the first year I took them. They had just spent a few days at my parents' house running free and being kids. On the way to camp they said, "I don't want to go to camp. Can't we just spend the week at the grandparents' house?"
Maybe that is why it is difficult to get excited about Heaven. I don't really know what it will be like, and I am having a pretty good time right here. But the more I get to know the Camp Counselor, the more I think I am really going to like Heaven. Anticipation.