Zits in the Tent

By Kathy Luder

This summer our pastor and his wife, Janet, took eight of us camping. I don't know what he was thinking, but this was real camping: tents, campfires, and no showers. We “sponge bathed” as best we could and washed our hair in a river. We ate beans, franks, burnt toast and heard over and over again how pastor used to be in the Marine Corps. On top of all that, the only entertainment between Matins, Bible Study, prayer time, and Vespers, was paddling around in a canoe and swatting at mosquitoes.

To make matters even worse, I showed up with a pimple under my nose bigger than Hitler's moustache. I wasn't happy to be there and this pimple seemed to know it. It was a throbbing red monster pulsing with my discontentment and anger. It looked like I was balancing a cherry tomato on my upper lip. I could barely open my mouth because of the pain. I just wanted to go home and hide in my room until the disfigurement either killed me or went away.

The final straw was Lisa. She and I were the only girls. At home, she lives just down the street from me on the next block. We used to be good friends. But then she got pretty and I stayed dumpy. She is a cheerleader with immaculate clothing and hair. She looks like she stepped right out of a Britney Spears' video and into the drooling hearts of all the boys in our school. Normally, even though she is the prettiest girl around and we are no longer the chums we once were, I can tolerate her because I am smarter and I figure that is what matters. But my zit wasn't really up for it. The only good thing, I thought, was that she is exactly the kind of girl who hates camping. Her casual good looks couldn't possibly hold up without make-up and running water. I was wrong. She loved it. She looked better than ever. And I felt worse.

But something happened. Lisa and I and my zit bonded.

Janet is a nurse and she went with Mike to the hospital after he got stung by a bee. That left the pastor and the boys in the big tent and Lisa and me alone in the other tent. I resisted at first, but before I knew it we were giggling and carrying on about Janet's maniacal reaction to the bee sting emergency and the whole camping fiasco. There in the dark tent it was like we were back in the 5th grade, when neither one of us was either pretty or dumpy. We laughed so loud that the pastor scolded us. It was fun. But when we finally calmed down, it got strangely serious. Staring blankly at the canvas, late into the night, we whispered back and forth about life, God, and the future.

And then, quite unexpectedly, something came welling up from inside of me. I couldn't stop it. I blurted out how ugly I felt and how mad I was about this zit and about the fact that Lisa was immune to them and had perfect skin. After a bit of silence, I heard Lisa sigh and roll over onto her side to face me. She said she was sorry. She always liked me and wanted to be my friend, but at some point I had stopped being nice to her. I made her feel stupid, like she was a traitor for dressing nice and going out on dates. She didn't think she was pretty. And she didn't think I was dumpy. She thought we were still the same as in 5th grade, except that I had changed. I said I was sorry, too. We just kind of faded out after that, both lost in our thoughts. Neither one of us said a word in the morning, but I tried to be nicer.

As we washed up in the river, I noticed that my pimple had receded enough to be almost mistaken for a freckle! It wasn't nearly so angry. Then Janet offered Lisa some ointment for the mosquito bite on her chin, which she declined. And I knew why. That was no mosquito bite. But strangely enough the reality of a zit on Lisa's chin gave me no joy, just sympathy.

Now, truth be told, I actually liked those worship services near the campfire. They were kind of quiet, unlike the trumpets and pipe organ stuff we get on Sunday mornings. I like that too, but this was a nice change. And for all of his awkwardness with kids, Pastor has a nice voice for chanting. I did feel a closeness to God in those services and was surprised at how relevant and interesting the Bible readings were. Time and again, it seemed like God had planned the whole thing just for me.

Here is part of what Pastor read on the morning after the bee sting incident: “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man” (1 Corinthians 10:13). I guess Lisa, and maybe even Janet, and I aren't so different after all. We are all sinners, all struggling through life, all tempted in similar ways. But we are also baptized into Christ and forgiven through His death and resurrection. God is faithful. I never before realized how much better that is, or how much closer that makes us, than just being friends.

Thanks to that trip, Lisa and I have renewed our friendship. I still don’t hang out with her on Friday nights, but I do sit with her during Sunday School. I pray for her, too. I don’t pray for her just because she is nice and is my friend, but because I can see that for all her good looks she needs it as bad as I do. I have to admit that the camping trip wasn’t so bad in the end. Except for the beans and the boys, which were bad at all points, but particularly in the end.

Kathy Luder attends Midwest Lutheran Church in Middleville, Indiana. She imagines herself quite stunning and extraordinarily clever but, alas, no photo is available. In fact, no photo exists.