A Big 'Ole Slice Of Humble Pie

Have you ever had one of those times when you think to yourself, "How in the world did they screw that up?" only to find out that they weren't the one to screw something up, but you were?

That happened to me tonight.

For six years now I have been responsible for signing girls up for church camp. We always have 2 groups go: one with just girls, and one with mothers and daughters. The camp for the girls was last week, and I had the mother/daughter camp scheduled and confirmed for last Friday and Saturday night.

Imagine my surprise when one of the girls camp up to me tonight at church and said, "My Mom wants to know what time she needs to be at camp tomorrow." My response was, "Ummm...camp was last week."

After a brief phone conversation, the mother told me that the form she had said that the date for camp was July 15-17. My first thought was, "She's got her dates wrong." I thought that the whole way home (in a rather self-righteous manner if I'm being completely honest with you) until Jeremy found my camp papers that showed that these two mothers did in fact sign up for the July 15-17th camp, and I had signed them up for the July 9-10 camp.

Talk about wanting to die.

There I had been wondering what Mom would screw up the dates for her kids to go to camp because, hello, that's what calendars are for, when the real problem was with me all along.

In case you are wondering, my ego is still slightly bruised from the beating tonight. It may never fully recover.

I've been sending girls to this church camp for 6 years and I've never made a mistake on registering the girls. It was a simple enough error; I simply wasn't paying attention. I looked at a mark on the form and "saw" what I thought I saw, when in fact, I just screwed up.

I immediately called both of the mothers and apologized profusely for my mistake. I didn't cut corners or make excuses; I owned it. This was my screw up, and I'm kicking myself for making such a stupid mistake. And while I know that mistakes happen, and no one is perfect, I hate it for these girls and their mothers. I hate that something I did caused such a big problem. The mothers were both so gracious about everything, but I'm just so upset with myself.

So tomorrow morning at 7:30 I'm going to be on the phone begging and pleading to get these girls into camp. Please say a prayer that things work out, especially for these girls who were so excited about camp.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm about to go eat a big piece of humble pie.

*Updated* I got everything worked out with no problems, and everyone is now at camp. Thanks so much for your prayers!