It’s been a bit since I have really posted, summer comes and life gets busy. The church I attend and love has a huge mission and heart for the next generation and part of that calling comes in the form of summer camp. 5 beautifully crazy weeks of hosting Youth America camp on the main church campus. Camp season is a huge deal for us, people rearrange schedules, take vacation days, lose numerous hours of sleep to be able to serve. Members from across 5 campuses find ways to help out from security, media, worship, food prep, taking out the trash, no job is too small when it comes to camp and everyone takes part because they believe in seeing lives changed.

Most of the time during our evening camp services I hang out in the media booth, either because I am serving in some capacity or because I really enjoy watching the evening from the media booth. The past few nights I’ve found myself reaching for my phone to capture moments of the evening, and later on scrolling threw pictures to find just the right one to post in hopes that it receives a handful of likes. I’ve looked out over the crowd and see others doing the same thing (we have a hashtag, the pictures are easy to stalk)

I’ve realized though that while I spend time attempting to get a decent picture, waiting for the lights to move the right way (I’ve spent many hours in lighting booths, it’s a habit) but while I click away trying to capture these moments frozen in time, what is happening is that I am actually missing that moment. I’ve tuned out of the music, out of the worship, out of the message, to waste time posting images to social media or capture images to look back on.

How many times do we do this? Instead of enjoying where we are, taking in the moments, sitting back and soaking in a sunset are we sitting there camera poised in an attempt to capture the perfect picture. And as we sit there waiting for some form of proof to show that we are going places, attending camp, traveling the world, showing friends and family and perfect strangers that we are living life, that we are so caught up in what quote we will post with what image we end up missing out on living.

How much time do we spend behind our phones texting and instagraming, and social media-ing what are supposed to be these fantastic moments in our lives but at the same time are missing the fact and the wonder of standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon? Or that we are spending time with best friends making moments rather than catching them?

Don’t get me wrong, I love having pictures to look back on, to see the memories that have been made, but from now on I plan to take a few less pictures so I can enjoy being in a few more moments. Instead of watching camp happen, joining in worship with hundreds of teenagers. Instead of planning how to word the perfect status, turning the phone off for a little and later on calling or meeting up with those friends to tell them about the experience and going back to when pictures were exciting to share because they weren’t plastered all over the internet before you could share the story behind the image in person.

Here’s to a summer of diving deep into the moments of each day, adding to the story of my life and not from behind an iphone screen.

-Elle