07/01/2026
These words are borrowed from a sweet, sweet friend who conveyed exactly what so many of us are feeling right now:
July is here, and I’m carrying more emotions than I know what to do with.
On one hand, Fourth of July has always been one of my favorite holidays. For the magic of the fireworks, but mostly because of where I got to spend it. For years of my life, it meant Camp Mystic. It meant a place that shaped me, surrounded by people who became my family.
But this year, this holiday carries a weight it never has before.
This Fourth of July marks 1 year since the catastrophic Guadalupe Flood. One year since 139 lives were lost - 28 of them at my beloved Camp Mystic, including our Heaven’s 27 girls and Dick Eastland. One year since the place I’ve loved my whole life became synonymous with heartbreak.
Camp Mystic loved me for exactly who I was. It never asked me to be different. It just drew out the best in me, in all of us. And more than anything, it drew me closer to Jesus than ever before. Behind those green gates is where my foundation with the Lord was built, year after year, summer after summer. That foundation didn’t stay within those gates. Camp Mystic gave us roots to carry us through the other 11 months of the year, and kept growing over the 10 summers I spent there as a camper and then counselor. That place didn’t just shape my summers. It shaped who I am as a person, my faith, and my character.
Grief is strange. It doesn’t always make sense, and it never stays in one place. I’ve found myself grieving in so many different directions all at once: for the families who lost a daughter or dad or friend or husband, and for the memories that I hold so close that now feel so tender in a way they didn’t before, and for the memories that my own daughter will not make at my favorite place. It all feels very real and also very heavy.
But we also know that it’s okay to mourn deeply while also still holding deep gratitude. You can have a broken heart for the lives lost way too soon, and you can have a broken heart for the place that helped make you who you are. Neither one cancels out the other.
Continued in comment: