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.