Other People's Children

Every day, I hear my name dozens, maybe even hundreds of times, from the mouths of other people's children.

Other people's children come to me on the playground when they don't feel well. Other people's kids bury their head in my side on the way to the nurses office. I break up fights and comfort tears. I give advice about pre-teen angst and explain why we can't pole dance on the playground. They run up for hugs and hold my hand while we're walking. I park them when they're out of control and teach a hundred times that we look the other person in the eye when we appologize and we do our best to make resitution.

Being the invisible hand helping to raise other people's children, means that I get to celebrate the silly little things. It means that I get to know the first time all year that a certain fifth grader makes it all the way through lunch in the gym without going to the office. It means that I get to celebrate when a "trouble" kid who has been studiously ignoring me for months crawls up close to play a board game and stays there, centimeters from my side, until he is forced to leave. It means I get to laugh with the fourth grader who pulls me by the bracelet, because he is too cool to take my hand, and pretend not to see the third graders who will creep up until they can body slam into my back, because someone has told them that big boys don't ask for hugs.

I get to explain to fifth grade girls that they have every right to stay away from boys who punch them by way of flirting and be totally baffled by a fifth grade boy who one week decides to hover by my side - until I drop a hand on the top of his head and he grins and runs off to play football. It means that I sit in the grass and explain how to write a paragraph, and it means trying to get a story read past the through-the-roof anxiety over a non-custodial parent coming to pick them up early from school.

Every once in a while I realize how strange it is that I know the eating habits of other people's children - who doesn't like sauce, or will only eat the inside of their sandwich; who can eat more than seems possible and who will throw out half of what's on their tray. I know which kids eat fast or slow, which ones need reminders to eat faster than they talk, and who needs a little extra encouragement to pick out fruits and vegetables.

I've learned the friends and playing habits of other people's children, who plays with who and how and the length of time that it's likely to be before they forgive each other after each new drama.

And, then, I have to wonder at the oddity of a culture that finds it normal to entrust so much of their children's lives to person that they will never know. When, exactly, did we decide that it was normal to raise other people's children?

To My Sunday School Kids (2012)

So, when I first walked into that room this fall, and they told us that we were getting all of our old kids back, that they weren't mixing the groups up unless the kids decided to move themselves, I foolishly breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that this was going to be easy.

Somehow, I forgot that you were getting older. I forgot that your lives weren't standing still just because part of our small group was going to stay the same. And, then. Then, there were twenty-two of us on any given day, and it was all that I could do just to keep track of all of your faces, to make sure that there were enough chairs in the circle and that we never stopped moving for long enough for you to get in trouble. Just like last year, we danced with the crazy that was our group, and we danced hard. It was working, for awhile.

In some ways, it is still working. But, the dance is different. Every week we learn a new step. Every week you try not to laugh at me as I trip over my two left feet.

Last year, our fifth graders were playful, helpful, inquisitive, and occasionally far too old for what the curriculum was trying to teach them. They were learning this Jesus stuff for the first time, and they soaked it in like sponges.

But, you, my private school kids, and my ones who have been in Sunday school your entire lives, who know every nook and cranny of the church like the backs of your hands. You already know all of the answers. You block me with sarcasm when we try to hit on things that you don't want to share. But, when we get the dance right, you melt.

Maybe it's just my imagination that thinks that, last year, the dance was easier. Or, maybe it was. But, I wouldn't trade it for the world.

J*m** - I can't tell you how amazed I am by the way that you have grown this year. That smile that ws so rare? I easily see a dozen every Sunday. You've started getting snarky back at the other boys, and, the other week, you were the one to initiate a greeting when you passed me in the hallway. The fourth grade boys think that you all but walk on water. Have I mentioned how much happier you are this year? It really is amazing.

K*r*n - You weren't actually in my group last year (which, technically, meant that you should never have been mine this year either), but you've come in two feet first. You're happiest when we have all of "your kids" there, the ones that you watch over like a mother hen, and I love that your favorite thing to do is sit with M*dd** under the table and pray.

M*dd** "G" - I'm pretty sure that you are only here because your "little knuckle heads" adopted me last year (I'm also pretty sure that you're the only girl who could get away with calling them that). You roll your eyes at our crazy group, and the goofy songs, and the Bible stories that sometimes, oddly enough, are not. But, when the chance comes to pray, you've started to jump on it. I love watching you pray for your friends, because, really, that is the best way that you could possibly take care of them.

G*bby - My talkative one, who hates more than anything else to get in trouble, (how you survive our group, I am never sure) I am amazed by your memory and the way that you soak everything up, putting together this year and last year and loving both of them. You ask me every other week if I am coming up to middle school with you (the answer is still that I don't know). When you let go of the frustration, inhale, smile, and use some sort of "we" phrase about our group, I see Jesus in you.

(1/8 of the way through my roster, so... more to come.)

Answered

“I'm pregnant.” Little girl eyes meet mine in the church hallway as a teenager tells me why is she isn't going to be at youth group for awhile, and, in retrospect, why she hasn't been there. It's been months since I've seen her, but she wants me to know. There's a new layer of fear in her eyes, but she tells me she's getting married to the baby's dad in April, after they've both had another birthday.

We talk for a few brief moments before we both have to go. I give a hug and a promise that she is always welcome, and, as quickly as it started, the encounter is over.

Not twenty-four hours earlier, I prayed that she would pop up at church again, and a little whisper in the back of my mind reminds me that God answers prayer (and that the answers don't always come the way we want them to).

We pray for Jesus to be tangibly present in our small groups and He comes, but He often comes in some of his more distressing disguises. He comes in the child who fixates on a single noise and continues to perseverate on it all morning until the other kids are ready to strangle him. He comes in kids with anger management issues and children who are so used to taking care of things themselves that they don't know how to function in a setting where we do what is best for the most.

“Can we learn the verse about fear?” Little boy eyes that see too much meet mine across the circle as one of my fifth graders points out a verse farther down on the sheet. The briefest flicker of that fear dances across his face, and I nod. He reads where it goes on to talk about the Spirit helping us to be in control and purses his lips, “I think that's the one that we need this week.”

They slip off to “their” spots to pray and all of the labels fall off, because, if they know one thing, it is that God answers prayers. For a few minutes, they all comply, no stragglers, no “lost” ones who don't want to transition to this new thing. For this moment, they are all fully present.

Because, God does answer prayers. Sometimes they get answered inside out and backwards, and sometimes they get answered straight up – like teenagers who come up to introduce themselves, wanting to get involved with justice issues; or visiting speakers standing on the stage and declaring that Christians are commanded to stand up for the oppressed and stand against injustice. Either way, He answers.

Church Presentation

The Brewsters shared again this afternoon, and, after their introduction in church this morning, they packed out the Desert View room with just over a hundred and fifteen people. For any sort of not-a-service meeting here, that is pretty stinking impressive.

Sensitive

Don and Bridget were introduced in church this morning. They showed a brief clip of their ministry, invited people to come this afternoon, and then Don mentioned that Christians are commanded to stand up for the oppressed and to stand against injustice. Not only was it the first time that our church has mentioned minor sex trafficking in front of the entire body, it was also the first time that I have heard anyone give such a very blunt call for justice.

We talk about God's justice, and our role in that, of course, but never quite in the way that it was stated this morning.

*At the risk of sounding like a Bible thumper* The combination must have ticked off some unseen visitors, because my more sensitive fourth and fifth graders – the ones who can't sit still or focus when they feel the spiritual unrest that means a God thing is coming – were on edge all morning. They weren't quite sure what, but they knew that something was happening. (Had it been just those ones, I might have addressed the issue, but I figured the rest of the parents might not have appreciated a seemingly unsolicited discussion of trafficking with their nine, ten, and eleven-year-olds.)

Next week, though, we might be starting up an ongoing discussion on spiritual gifts.

Community Night

Almost seventy people gathered in the fellowship hall last night to hear about what Agape InternationalMissions is doing to combat minor sex trafficking in Cambodia. The anti-trafficking ball is rolling here, and it is picking up speed.