Living above our feelings
January 20, 2025By Jeff Becraft
Over the years, when our kids were younger, they would go with me on most of the camps and retreats, and one of those camps was SOTO in Arkansas. I’ve talked about SOTO before. It’s out in boogah cheetah. It’s 95-degree heat and unbelievable humidity. Poison ivy is the state plant and it is copperhead central. All facts that I’ve shared before. We would usually go with one of the children’s homes, Black Mountain Home for Children, and what would happen is we would go in early several days, and we would be on what was called firewood duty. BMH was just an incredible workforce.
This camp runs everything off of wood stoves. That’s where they get all their heat. And so in exchange for paying for being at the camp, Black Mountain Home would come in early, do probably 85% of their firewood for the year in those few days, and then we would get to be at the camp for free. The work that this group did in 3 days impacted hundreds of people throughout the year that would come through that camp.
One year we were not traveling with that children’s home and the two girls, Corrie and Hannah, and I drove in a separate vehicle. That particular year, I was going to be in charge of the guys’ sessions in the mornings at the camp, and so I wasn’t just along with the children’s home.
This meant we really did not have to go early. We could have just shown up when the camp started… and we could have skipped firewood duty. But the response of Corrie and Hannah was, “There’s no way we’re missing firewood duty!”
Now let’s reiterate this again… this is 95 degree blazing heat, unbelievable humidity, poison ivy is the state plant, and you never know when a copperhead is going to show up. And so when you’re pulling up a log, you’re never quite sure what’s underneath it or on the other side. In fact, they train us how to roll the log back, just in case there’s a snake in there. And our two daughters, one was in high school and one was in middle school, are saying they do not want to miss this.
What is going on here?
There’s a special camaraderie, a special belongingness, that happens when you work together… when you work together and you accomplish something significant. It really is being part of something great.
They would serve us lunch in the dining hall each day. We would come in soaking wet from sweat, covered with dirt and sawdust, and we were walking into air conditioning. We would sit there in that air conditioning (which was a huge relief) after three hours of being out in the blistering heat… and we would eat lunch.
I can tell you right now, at 12:30 when lunch was over, I did not feel like going back out there. None of us felt like going back out there. But we would get up from the lunch table, dump our trash in the trash can, turn our plates in, and then we would head out the door and head to the truck. Why? Because we were needed. Each one of us was needed. (Now, I was usually the last one out the door. I’m old and grumpy, and I walk like Fred Sanford. Thankfully, Black Mountain has been very patient with me with all my high maintenance shenanigans. And so they just know that Becraft is probably going to be the last one to the truck. Then going down three flights of steps… after eating lunch… in soaking wet and grimy clothes… after being in air conditioning… it was going down… one… step… at… a… time.
We would go back out there, and we would get back after it.
I’m telling you, there is a sense of camaraderie, there is a sense of togetherness, there’s a sense of accomplishment… there’s a sense of accomplishing something epic by doing that.
Now, none of us felt like doing that… but we chose to do that. And at the end of the day, there’s just something about being part of something epic, working side by side with one another… whether you feel like it or not.
Oftentimes, in life, we get things backwards. We wait till we feel like doing something… and if we’re not inspired, we don’t do it. In reality, what we need to do is choose what’s most important and then dedicate ourselves to that, and once we do that, then the feeling follows.
And it is a much deeper and satisfying feeling than if we just simply follow what we feel like doing.
Jeff Becraft is the Director of Our Place of Hope and the Director Emeritus for Youth Corps and has dedicated much of his life to helping shift the vision of people’s lives. Our Place of Hope is a paradigm shift for people living with mental illness that encourages them to regain meaning, purpose, and hope for their lives. You can connect with Jeff at [email protected].