Messy

There are some Sundays where mornings with the fourth and fifth graders are light and easy and everything that is wrong in their worlds can be fixed with a smile or a laugh or just a little bit of attention - when they are safe and alive and happy and our group feels messy in the way that creating art is messy. Crazy and hard to understand from the outside, but clearly in the process of becoming something beautiful.

Then, there are weeks like today, where we still smile, and we laugh a little, and we lavish on the attention, but it isn't enough. Weeks when they trust enough to come with their hurt hanging out in the open and we don't have enough time to bandage everyone's wounds - when I am half tempted to skip story, so that we can just sit down and get to the bottom of it all, as if we could talk and hug and chase everything away. These are the weeks when they come scared and angry and shamed and hurt, and they don't have the words for any of it. Weeks when I am suddenly aware of the fact that there are sixteen of them and one of me. And, our group feels messy in the way that a disaster zone might feel messy.

So, we run, and we memorize verses, we pray for each other, and we try new things. We talk about friends who are homeless or living doubled up - because, even though it isn't THE issue for any of them, it is an issue for all of them, one more thing that they are seeing and struggling to understand.

And, when it takes longer before they can force their bodies to listen, when kids who I know love Jesus don't want to pray, when they won't meet my eyes because I might see what they are trying to forget, we plow through it. Because, this is beautiful too.


Messy and painful and frustrating, yes. But, beautiful.

Beautiful: because they have discovered that you don't have to be perfect to be at church, because they are growing and changing, because they are living out the trust that we built last year, because they are raw and honest, because they are healing, because there is a God who knows their hearts more deeply than I ever could, because they are clinging to His promises, and because this mess is community.

Like most God things, it is totally and completely beyond my power, like standing at the sea shore with a bucket, trying to catch the waves. And, odd as it seems, I am okay with that.

(But, it might be time to draw another leader into our crazy community, so that the thirty-five kids on my roster have another set of ears to listen and another pair of hands to catch them when they are hurting and out of control. Because, easy days or hard days, if better shepherd to student ratios are possible within the small group, I am all for that!)