Fire and Rain

Thunder shakes the building where the Haiti team is prepping for VBS, two lightening strikes lighting the mountain behind us on fire while they watch. It is the hot dry of a summer thunderstorm, and the flames are spreading fast. On their own, they huddle up and decide to do something.

They pray for the fire to go out, and it does. Sheets of water pouring from the sky and flooding across the parking lot. Not ten minutes later, the rain has passed and the sun is back. If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes - or ten.

But, if I had the audacity to speak for the Divine, I might begin to say that this was on purpose. On purpose like the way that the dates were changed for our very first VBS trip to Haiti, when, instead of silence, we stepped out of the crowded vans and into a night filled with songs of worship. Because, these dates too, were once different.

The first paperwork we gave them put this back a weekend, seven days ago, with no thunder or lightening or pounding rain. And, I can't help but wonder if this weekend was a gift. A reminder of a God who hears prayer.

We've been praying for this trip for months. My cluster ought to be sick of hearing the word Haiti fall from four sets of lips at every turn, every chance for a prayer request. But, rarely together, rarely as a team. And, this first time, they see an answer so rapid that they can't stop talking about it. 

There is a new confidence in these nervous kids. The God of angel armies has just answered thier call.

If it is a gift, it is one that we will hold to tightly, one that we will continue to weave through their story in the moments when they are anxious or uncertain or afraid. Because, fear is a big deal to these kids, one that we talk about far too infrequently. This is, after, all Eastern Washington, a church full of engineers, doers and fixers and pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps types. But, that makes them no less teenagers growing up in an uncertain world.

Today has spilt some of that wide open, lightening and thunder and fire bringing hidden things straight to the surface, and it is good. Good for them to know that they are not alone. Good for truth to spill out and grace to be given.

TRUTH, for this team, is going to be a powerful tool.

Impulse

"I feel stupid now." The seventh grader pressed against my elbow catches my attention during music, and I have to give him the space to finish the thought, because our last conversation was about Aspergers and brain function, but, thirty seconds later, he could be anywhere.

It's been one of those days, where we're once again drowning in grace.

It's Father's Day and the end of the first week of summer, and their bodies are on edge.

He is always close these days, leaning back just a little, his foot overlapping mine as we stand around the octagon. Today, he leans in, close enough that our arms are connected, and, ever since we got back inside, he hasn't been able to stop talking.

Impulsive. Random. Talking.

He catches himself once or twice, "That was mean. I shouldn't have said that." and verbally acknowledges the nonsense chatter, "I'm just trying to find anything to talk about."

But, the words keep coming.

We talk about Biblical geography and the violence of Bible stories. We go down a list of kids who aren't there and where they might be. We talk about old songs and figures of speech. His voice cracks, and the whisper isn't always. 

The youth pastor calls people out for talking, and he blushes and glances at me guiltily, but it still doesn't stop the questions and observations.

"I just realized," perhaps the most important phrase slips out in the middle of a song as he finishes his thought, "that it doesn't matter if you move up with us or not. Nothing will change for me, because I'm not even in your small group right now."

There is relief in his eyes.

Nothing will change. He is still safe. He is still known. I'm not leaving him.

But, there is also shame. 

Because, that opener of "I feel stupid" wasn't exaggeration. There is something in this kid that whispers that it is true. 

That he is stupid. That he doesn't measure up. That he isn't enough or is too much. That he is the kind of kid that people leave.

Lies.

And, this time, I am the one initiating the talking, making sure that he knows that he isn't the last of the boys to figure it out - in fact, he's been the first of them to verbalize it. 

Ruffling my hand through his hair. Leaning down to listen and talk. Letting him stand as close as he can.

Because I have my own impulsive need to make him understand truth, to let him see grace.

Grace that spins him in circles when he is too paralyzed to do the motions on his own. Grace that will carry his body weight when he leans in the next time and lets me pivot him on one foot like a two-year-old. Grace that returns his smile when he finally settles in for a few moments to worship.

Grace that hands out gum in the hallway as we're leaving and lets him keep my phone in his pocket when he thinks we're being separated for the game.

Grace to prove that the only place safer than the center of God's will is in His presence. Grace for days like today, where fear and shame bubble just a little closer to the surface. 

Grace that says that he is enough.

Because, I don't know where the lies are coming from. I know that it is Father's Day. I know that school is out and he misses his friends. I know that strong emotions happening in the main service have traditionally put his behaviors on edge.

And, I realize how very little I know about this one's family. He is intensely private, even when he is standing in my space. But, I do know that our God is greater than any lie, any fear, any sense of shame.  I do know that, even today, there is grace to cover.

Past and Present

RFKC training. I pick her up early on Saturday morning and feel the whisper as we pass someplace we have already been - a cycle completed.

Last time I was at this camp, she was one of my campers, a tiny little blonde child who still vividly remembers folding to the ground, arms and legs crossed tight, epically pissed off at me for some reason that both of us have forgotten. But, oh so definitely angry.

We stop to pick her up an energy drink, and, on the way to the church, she tells me that they asked her the same question in her interview that they ask everyone, "What would you do if a camper told you that they hated you?"

She said that she didn't know - then laughed as she told them that remembered probably using those exact same words on me.

And, I'm a little bit in awe of a God who ties things off long after we had thought them completed. Because, I never thought that, this many years later, we would be here.

I was eighteen when I was her counselor, just out of high school, ready to leave for college, not really planning to move back, to live here again. She was little, still years from graduating camp, reprimanding me every time that I praised her, jumping on the teen staff like they were climbing frames, and generally doing her best to prove that she was old hat at this - that she really didn't need me much at all.

But, we were well matched, both stubborn as mules, paired with a second child who was sweetly excited over everything. I remember settling onto the grass beside her and just waiting. I never would have guessed that that waiting could have been a  - very small - drop that poured into this.

There's a "Welcome Home Dinner" for the camp staff and families each year, and an open mic time for counselors to tell stories about amazing breakthroughs or cute conversations: like the time that one of my little Sunday school boys was stuck on the rock wall, petrified to move up or down, completely unresponsive to his counselors - until I called his name and he looked down at me... and climbed straight up to the top;

like his sister, who verbally forbade me from being away at college the next summer;

or... like my camper, who angrily sat in the games field refusing to go in to dinner, who probably told me that she hated me.

Except, not so much on the last one. I sat and listened to stories of amazing healing conversations that took place and wondered what families would think if I shared my story of a pissed off little towheaded child who went to my church.

Six years later, we will once again be in the same cabin. She's coming back as a CIT, one of two previous campers to be on this year's staff. She no longer hates me. She still has the pictures from that year. We laugh about the story often, and I was actually able to see her in action on a ministry trip last summer.

Six years later, it could be a welcome home story - all because of a God who, I am pretty sure, gets a kick out of reminding me just how carefully He ties the past together with the present, building seasons and cycles into our lives that we never could have imagined.

On The Edge of Grace

They're the upperclassmen now, the experienced ones, the ones who, last year, seemed so tall and gangly compared to their child-like selves.

This week the eighth graders graduate. Next week they will be gone, replaced by a swarm of wide eyed sixth graders. Next week will be change.

We talk about it coming, and the anxiety rushes to the surface like a tidal wave, compounded by a game that splits boys from girls, separating them without their consent. Music comes, all of us back together, and I don't have enough hands to begin to hold onto all of these ones that need it.

Often, we are disruptive, a squirming mass in the middle of the crowd, but we aren't the only ones, and there is grace in this room. Grace for bodies that won't stay still and minds that won't stop racing. Grace for children growing into adults, who feel alien in their own skins. Grace for boys who shouldn't still be mine but are, working overtime to ensure that no other leader knows their name and hovering millimeters from my elbow to talk.

There is grace, but we are pushing up against the edge of it, teetering on the line.

And, it feels little desperate - because they are. Because school is out in a few days. because summer is coming. And, because I am leaving.

"Why can't you be a seventh grade leader next year?" It's asked a dozen times, as if they can force the answer to change by sheer repetition. "Why can't you tell Chris you want to stay with us?"

And, I'm not going anywhere, not really, staying down with the new class of sixth graders to help them transition in. But, everything in them seems to scream that that isn't the way that things are supposed to go.

We've seen these behaviors before, pressed up against the edges of a much different type of grace in the Children's Wing. And, I glance at the youth pastor who is watching carefully, the warning in his eyes gently insistent. Get them under control. Remind them to be quiet.

"Put it away." One of them finally hisses at the others long after music has faded into an open mic for the graduating eighth graders, long after they are supposed to be listening quietly. "Or, Jessica is going to get in trouble."

It's been long months since I used to coax their fifth grade selves out of trees or in from the parking lot with a laughing reminder that, "If we don't get in for story, Mr. Phil is going to eat me," and I'm not sure what to make of it now to hear it coming from their lips. Except that the phrase most often came out on the edgy days, the days where they most needed to not follow the plan, the days where we turned a simple Sunday school lesson into a dance.

Today, I can hear the reminder in the simple words. There is grace here and trust (and fear and anxiety and confusion). There is the trust that, no matter how old they get, their actions still fall back on me. 

Trust that they are shielded, because they know that they are not the ones teetering on the edge of human grace. 

I am.

Because, we have worked so hard to build this kind of trust. To whisper that they don't have to be perfect. That He is more than enough. That it is okay to be afraid.

And, so, I teeter on the edge of Grace, not at the end of it, but at the beginning.

Grace that is enough.

Enough to reach out for the hundredth time that day to connect with a squirming child. Enough to shake my head no without shaming them for their fear. Enough to sit and listen and pray. Enough that we are drowning in it.

Messy. Beautiful. Grace.

Grace that leaves their faces on my phone screen and echoes through the goodbye that is shouted across the fellowship hall. Grace that begins at the edge, on the line, in the place where human patience wears thin.

They are uncertain, but something deep inside of them knows where we stand. Because we are standing on the edge of grace.