Tapestry

Sometimes I wonder if I am doing this right.

There are moments when I let myself listen to the well trained part of my soul that whispers that there is a difference between "serving at church" and "going to church," that church is a thing to be sat through, rather than an identity to be lived out, that there is only one right way of doing this thing.

And, then I look into the eyes of my kids.

And, I remember that the Church is a people.

Church is a people that can serve and play and listen and pray and demonstrate to the world what it means to be a living, breathing, messy, beautiful community. So, it's church when I sit in service with my parents, but it's also church when I listen to that teaching later, because the service time is spent living it with my kids.

If the Church is a tapestry, an incomplete work of art, then this is how we weave together the layers of life.

Several of the middle schoolers work in the children's wing. Two layers. We pass each other in the hallway or on the lawn, trailing trains of little people behind us. Three layers. We sit mixed in with them during story or music, or we work together to help tiny fingers finish a craft. High schoolers work alongside and in between and everywhere that they could possibly serve. Four layers.

To sixth and seventh and eighth grade minds, this is what the Body does. Layers upon layers upon layers. Practicing being mature in their faith, but with older hands waiting there to catch them if they start to fall.

And, it's amazing.

I love when they talk to me about 'their kids' the way that I talk about them as 'mine.'

A new sixth grader acknowledges the upcoming transition by asking whether it was weird to teach Sunday school without *brother* and *brother's girlfriend* who graduated from high school this past spring, and I have to smile, even as we talk about what it's like to have a sibling leave for school.

Not because he misses them or because we have changed the world with ninety seconds of conversation, but because of the absolute muddle of categories that just fell from his lips.

Elementary. Middle school. High school. College. Adult.

Even in this big church, with all of it's classrooms and schedules and (much needed) directors of this and that, he somehow understands what it is to be a part of the Body. Everyone mixed up, tumbling over each other, creating stories faster than we can share them, teaching each other, making messes, and learning together: part of the Body.

Over and over, parents and Sunday school teachers and youth leaders have told them that work is worship, that community and relationship and reality intersect with the Divine, that there is Truth and Glory to doing life together.

That the layers help make this thing beautiful.

So, we get glue on our fingers, water on our shirts, and grass on our feet, and we prove to ourselves that these little people who sing Ten Thousand Reasons in lisping baby voices are the Church.

We run and throw balls and answer questions and remember that these middle schoolers who nudge my hands up during music with a quiet, "You forgot," are the Church.

The tiny group of highschoolers, with the boy who remembers to ask how my sister is doing in South Carolina, they are the church.

The adults mixed in with every age and the hundreds of people who sit in any given service.

These are what our portion of the Church looks like on Sundays.

And, it's okay not to be everywhere at once, okay not to be in service, because this is Church, and it's never had much real formula outside of loving Jesus and honoring one another.

Truth

These kids. They're harder to pin down these days, less the wild children who used to run across the parking lot to their favorite tree or laugh and dance and throw the last bits of their donuts.

Tomorrow, if I came with donuts, I would be hard pressed to bring enough for extras. They're growing, and I don't know how their parents feed them, these cavernous creatures who stretch up each time that they see me, marking growth against some invisible line on my arm, my shoulder, my neck.

I can hip check them now with only the slightest bend of my knees, and their shoulder connects with my bicep when they slam the side of their body into mine. "I'm faster." M*t** shoves into me with all of the confident strut of a twelve year old, knowing that I'll drop my shoes and my conversation to chase him. Faster than last year. Faster than last week. Faster than yesterday.

He is. And, it's harder to tell these days which one of us is going easy on who.

At camp, he holds his force when we play chicken on the log, waiting to really tackle me until the end of the week, when he's confident in my ability to stand my own and fly into the water unharmed. But, he refuses to go kayaking without me, and there is something still young and unhindered in his eyes when he asks me to change buses, to ride home with them, when he reminds me a half dozen times that I promised to try.

They aren't quite my littles any longer. But not quite my "big kids" either.

They're middle schoolers: sixth, seventh, eighth graders.

We're learning new steps to an old dance, and sometimes it feels like the curve is too steep for any of us. But, we're figuring it out in that same messy way that we always do.

They show up for a youth group night at a local water park and ask for just enough time to go home and pack a bag before we go back to camp. They're joking, but there's truth behind it. Truth behind the talks about adoption and race and body image, about what they used to be like when they were little.

Truth to the kid who tells me that he isn't having such a good day. Truth behind the smiles that meet mine and truth behind the tears that still come when they find themselves overwhelmed. Truth behind the constant circles on the lazy river where we don't talk at all. Truth to the girls who chain behind me like a trail of ducklings and truth to the boys who reach for a hand out of the whirlpool.

"Wait right there." One of the boys commands after we miss our grip and he is left still spinning in whatever game they're playing. "I want to talk to somebody when I get out."

If he were a little younger, I would tease him about the lack of a 'please,' force him to use manners in the same gentle joking way that we do everything else. Except that he did. I can see it written in every line of his body, the 'please' when he needs it to be his turn. Sooner or later, he is going to make it happen.

I wait for a few moments, but we've (together) been on the wrong side of lifeguards before, and he hates it, so I let go of the wall when she starts giving that look. We never do talk. And, I'm racking up quite the list of kids who would like a quiet stretch of time all their own.

It feels unfinished. Hard to pin down. Messy. But, there is just enough truth to make it beautiful.

Beautiful when they use my towel and when we can't find the showers before we get in. Beautiful when a 7th grade boy wordlessly comes up and passes me a pack of cookies from the cafe. Beautiful when they wave and grin or shoot me with a water cannon. Beautiful when our small group breakout is as scattered and vehement as their thoughts. Messy but beautiful.

August Rush

their 4th and 5th grade sized selves

It's August, and the transition to Fall is nipping at our heels. They are restless, and rightly so. Loose inside bodies that grew like weeds over the summer. Uncertain of where they fit into a new school year. Squirming under the sense that it is almost here - but still so far away.

It is a season filled with worried eyes. With fears that sit half remembered under the surface.

But, also by their confidence.

Not the proud, heady sort, but the quiet kind that trusts me to chase them, to play, to continue without remark when we turn off the lights and a twelve-year-old becomes my shadow. The quiet kind that knows that they are safe and seen and protected.

Because, I am reminded that kids who still don't know each other's names know mine. And, that they use it. Again and again and again. Almost as often as I use theirs. As if we are making each other real. Giving identity to flesh and bone. Creating stepping stones in the muddle that is this transition.

Toby. Gabe. Jonah. Mateo. Gabby.

We're still cashing in on the trust that was built up at camp, using it to carry us through.

They remember when they were "little" and in my small group. Maybe more so now than they ever used to. Because, it's one of those seasons where we go back and trace old threads, where they count back how long they've known me and start to follow one another on Instagram after years without contact, Snapchatting with other kids who remember the storage room or the tree or the constant foot races.

They're deciding who they are, going back and building their own stories.

They've only had a few months to settle into these new grades that they've been given, haven't had the chance yet to test them out in school, and we're at that stage where they feel the need to shake it all up, to see if they can find a better fit. They are testing their wings, creating their own stories, and it becomes a dance to see how much yield there is in this system that has been created.

Boys this way. Girls that. Sixth grade. Seventh grade. Eighth grade.

Summer has reminded them that not all of life is divided into these categories, and they push a little, wondering how firm they really are.

We let them push a little, test, explore, experiment. And, I marvel at how far we have come, from the wide eyed sixth graders who sat as close as they possibly could; from the fifth graders who sat under bushes and covered themselves with bark, pretending to be Peeta; from the fourth graders who used to flip their chairs upside down and use them as spaceships; and from the kindergarteners who we team taught, simply because no one thought to make us stick to the curriculum.

It's August, and this season won't last for more than another week or two. It's a transition, a last holding on before we jump back into the school year. But, we'll take it while it lasts.

Debrief

"It kind of feels like a dream," the girls admit during debrief, "like maybe it didn't really happen."

"I'm not really sure what I learned."

"I think that I got more out of Bridgetown."

"Coming back was a lot easier than I expected."

They mean it. As much as they can be certain this soon after the trip, they mean it. This isn't our first team who came back with Haiti haunting their sleep and waking them up at 4:00 every morning. It isn't our second team who came back with a village in their eyes. This is our third team, and the new girls have made it very clear that they don't like being compared.

So, they were this team, the team that pushed so far beyond even their own expectations of themselves that it doesn't seem real. The team that went expecting to come back with sad stories of impoverished children but never got them.

Instead, they came back with Haiti as just another country. Full of people. Who like some of the same music. Who serve the same God. Who work on the same team. Who have history and struggle and joy. Who dance and sweat and make life work.

Smiles and laughter and playing with kids makes for good pictures, but it's harder to condense into a story. Harder to explain the quiet voices that want to know when you are coming back, the recognition exploding in shy smiles across faces that you never dreamed of seeing again.

You see, there's a strange thing about ministry trips, where you're supposed to come back with gritty stories about poverty and inequality and courage, a quiet whisper of white man's burden that no amount of training can silence; and something in them tells them that they don't fit that mold.

No one was the rescuer, not from Haiti or Curacao, not from the Pacific Northwest or the deep South, and humans aren't quite sure how to tell stories that don't have an us and a them. So they tell it differently here than they do with other people, a little more raw. Both versions are true, but I wonder if this one isn't a little truer.

Can we tell a different truth here and there and still have both be honest? How do we tell the right story, the way that it really happened?

"I think that this year was more about the team than anything else," they start to vocalize it, this thing that they've been sitting on since we got off of that final plane, "more about what God did between us than about coming back with sad stories."

More about smiles and laughter and tears; more about piggy back rides and bandages on bloody knees and feet and shoulders; more about late nights and quiet mornings; more about The Church in all of its grace and messiness.

More about people.

One Week

They say that, "One week makes a difference."

And, it does. I've seen the trust we build during church camp. I've seen the trust that we build here. There are a thousand little things about this camp that make it unique, that make it "Royal Family," but, really, one week here isn't so different.

I have eleven year olds, Leaders in Training, kids who are going to age out of camp this year. Girls the same age as the sixth graders I had at church camp. There were six girls in that cabin and seven in this one, but four counselors instead of two. Night falls and we don't read a story, but I pass out the same flashlights and lanterns that were worn to the end of their batteries by the last set of ten and eleven year olds.

Because, kids everywhere are afraid of the dark. And, it isn't only Royal Family kids who have a reason to be.

There are seven year olds at this camp, though, and curfew reflects that. They aren't tired enough to go to sleep. Instead, they lay, quiet, in a cabin full of strangers, not sure yet if this many grown ups makes them feel safer or more uncertain. They don't get the benefit of church camp, of knowing us before they come up, and there is a tension in their shoulders that I have seen in my boys - even at church camp - when we send them off for a first night with a counselor that they don't know.

Eventually, they sleep, they wake up, we start off the rhythm that is camp.

It's slower, this camp, easier in a lot of ways. Boundaries are pulled tight, and they don't try to push them. This is safety, and they thrive in it. Always enough for seconds and food lines that never stop moving, never make you wait and wonder. Snacks come always, during free time and right before bed, often with a little trinket to hold on to and remember.

Only the final breakfast is nasty and not enough, and I see that fear jump into their eyes. So, we talk about lunch instead, where they are stopping the buses, the park where they will be eating pizza. Because, this fear, also, is more than simply Royal Family.

This is the look that sends our church kids sneaking up through the snack shack or coming late to meals. Because so much time in such a long line leaves too much space to wonder and worry and be afraid. Afraid that there might not be enough. Afraid that you might go hungry. This is why counselors hide food away in their suitcases especially for the bus ride home, when the promise of a stop for snacks is not quite enough to erase the feeling of not having a meal.

This fear too is familiar, this week not so different.

So much of it is similar. We swim and play games, sing songs and dance during chapel. My LIT girls harbor crushes on the LIT boys and they giggle for hours over one of the boys that I know from school. They come out of their shells during camp and then slip back into them as they step off the bus.

The leaving is slower and more drawn out, with kids who don't know that they will ever see their counselor again. We "graduate" the LITs with a certificate and a gift and words of affirmation. Tears come the final morning rather than the final night. For some kids they come both, and stories finally begin to be told as they process what it is that they are going home to. Stories that aren't so different from the ones that we heard around the campfire the final evening of church camp, from kids the same age or just a little older.

And, it isn't the familiar that makes Royal Family different. It isn't the water fights or goofy moments with eleven year old boys. It isn't putting on my playground duty hat and sorting through the stories to get to the bottom of what really happened. It isn't even the nervous way that they struggle to focus with "new strangers" setting up a Birthday party a hundred yards away.

The difference comes in counselors and staff who come back year after year after year. Come back often enough for these kids to trust them. The difference is in kids who know, after five years or countless siblings and foster siblings through the camp before them, that this is a safe place to be.

The ratio that the eleven year old boys have, one camper to one counselor, would scare the crap out of most of my kids, if for no other reason than that our culture has taught them a vague distrust of adult men. There is a steadiness here, though, a consistency of ten years of service, that makes these grown ups seem safe. And, you can't buy that or bottle it or train it into anyone. It simply takes time.

One week makes a difference. But, it is week after week, year after year, of staying the same even when everything else in the kids' lives is changing that makes Royal Family different.