Shoeboxes

There are kids who have grown up on this, "Shoebox kids" who do this as naturally as breathing.

Pack shipping cartons more efficiently than many adults. Handle a tape gun as confidently as the blunt tipped scissors that they still use in school. Load semi trailers. Keep log books. Stretch their arms to carry in a stack of five boxes, because they can. And, because that is how we double check numbers.

Kids who bake cookies and write letters and spend time in the prayer room.

Who know that Sunday and Monday mean eating food in short bursts, whenever they can get it. Who always have a sharpie for carton numbers and an extra rubber band, just in case.

Who do homework when it is quiet and know, instinctively, that more work will come.

They fill balloons and run errands and sort donations. 

Call carton numbers when the relay centers come in and outwork many adults.

Twelve and thirteen year olds who move hundreds of shipping cartons. Seventeen year olds who spend hours of their time down in the collection center. Five year olds who come to work and second graders who keep them in line.

Clusters who come year after year. Middle schoolers and high schoolers who show up to box and load Bethel's cartons.

Sixth graders who refuse to take off their sweatshirts in the sweltering middle school service, because they know that leaving them behind will mean freezing later as they unload and stack and carton thousands of new boxes in a room with an always open door. Who melt to the floor during a game of spoons and play kneeling instead of standing, because we're almost to the end of the week but not yet, and they're tired.

Kids who play in semi trailers as naturally as if they were in their own house. Who clamber on top of boxes to get the highest row. Who pray for kids that they will probably never see and practice the spiels that my mom gives when she talks about the project to a visiting group.

Who finish out collection week with goodbyes that sound like, "See you next year!" and don't think anything odd about it.

Kids who are growing up here, for this one week a year, the way that we did, my sisters and I, back in the days when the semi parked in our driveway or our school books traveled with us in bursting totes.

Growing up serving. Growing up working. And, this year, growing up seeing boxes stream in until we are over a thousand past our goal.

14,814 boxes.

Packed. Cartoned. Recorded. Loaded. Prayed over. Sent off.

Growing up hearing and seeing stories of simple provision time and time again. Growing up with this bustling, temporary community that eats together, works together, laughs together, and fights hard to keep from getting short tempered. Growing up with adults and children working alongside and as equals. Growing up where the length of your reach is the primary job qualification for anyone who comes with a willing heart.

Growing up with shoeboxes.

Charis

It's winter now, fully and completely.

There is ice on my car in the morning, and the short drive to church isn't enough time for my defrost to even begin to think of being warm. The heaters in the church building are on full blast and rooms that are usually cold are nearly tropical.

The kids have settled in, and, even with the squirrely energy of a last Sunday before Thanksgiving break, even with a main service that runs long for communion, we are relatively calm.

Transition antsy. Pre holidays stressed. But, in a familiar sort of way. Like we've done this before. Like we know how to get through this.

So, the fifth graders come and tell me all about their weeks. About basketball tryouts they had and funerals that they are leaving for. We work on a project and finish up the week's notebooking. We sing and hear a story and talk about Job.

And, we find grace when their voices are too loud and too forced. When we have to remind them to listen even though they want to be playing. When they explode for a few minutes an it is a little bit wild and a little bit sassy. When it has nothing to do with candy or sugar or hours of sleep and everything to do with big feelings in small bodies.

When they borrow my phone to play a preschool science game about things that sink and things that float.

When they need the space to be a little bit hurt and a little bit broken, a little bit sad or a little bit uncertain, there is grace to cover.

Charis.

A Strong's Concordance entry that starts at 'eucharisteo' and meanders through until we are here. Until we have taken gratitude down, almost to its simplest form. Until we are once again drowning in grace.

Grace for a seventh grade boy who looks at me in confusion when they are told to find their leaders for rotations. As if, somehow, the fact that all of the other seventh grade boys are flocking to these men might not mean that he is meant to follow.

Grace when I point and he nods, and my group stars going one way and his starts going another. When he falls flat to the ground and looks for me to pick him up. When I do and he stands for a moment and then lets himself fall the other direction.

Maybe he honestly doesn't know what to do. Maybe he just doesn't want to do it.

Maybe we are pushing too hard, asking too much, on a week where they just want to be close.

But, there is grace.

Grace to nudge him to his feet and send him off with hands on shoulders and in his hair.

Grace when he tells me that he is going to get "lost" and then hides behind a set of doors until my group goes past. When the seventh grade boys shout my name over a balcony and the seventh grade girls call me over to watch them play duck duck goose.

When we talk about old times and they ask over and over why I am not still their breakout leader.

When we come back together and his friends clear a space so that he can sit right beside me. When sixth graders are on my left and seventh graders on my right. When they do all of the things that they are not supposed to do during music.

Glancing at me every time.

Testing the limits of grace.

Daring me just to reach out and hold on. Daring me not to let go.

Another leaders steps over, and they settle for a minute or two. Taking off for the storage room as soon as we finish. Basking in the familiarity of something old. Knowing that, when it is time, I will come to find them.

I do. I always do. 

And, somehow, in twelve and thirteen year old minds, it is a picture of grace.

Charis.

Not 'just grace,' as if there were any such thing, but the way that we live because of grace. The gratitude that covers everything. The loving kindness and favor that comes, not because we are perfect, but despite our imperfections.

Grace that sees them. That knows where they are and what they are doing. That has the time to watch ridiculous puppet plays and shout goodbyes across emptying rooms.

Grace for kids who notice everything, from the fact that I am wearing shoes today instead of flip flops, to the fact that it is my phone that travels with the 7th grade boys to take pictures. Grace for leaders who are messy in our own ways, tired, or out of our depth.

Grace. Not because any of us deserve it. But, because all of us need it.

Enough

Sunday.

When I can't decide if I should be letting go or holding on a little tighter.

When smiles are more important than almost anything else, not because there is so much stock put into being happy, but because every grin is a deep chance for connection, an excuse for eye contact and proof that they are loved.

When I do my best to look confident, even when it isn't true.

And, when I don't know that I am doing it right at all.

Because, sometimes, on Sunday, I let fear whisper back at me. Whisper that I am too much. Not enough. Wrong.

That this isn't how it goes. Isn't how it's done.

But, I look in their eyes that have never known anything else, and I wonder what it would mean for them if we suddenly started doing it "right."

Would they learn to behave? Would they settle down? Or, would they disappear? Quit coming?

Monday comes.

And I am reminded in a dozen ways that it is sometimes okay to do it wrong.

Reminded by an eleventh grade boy who stretches tall above my head these days but still laughs over the days when I was his third grade Sunday school teacher. Endless relay races and failed kangaroo kicks. Too much noise and not enough sitting still. Once quiet relationships that still stand.

Although, these days, he is far from quiet!

Reminded by a teacher in the behavioral room who murmurs how much smoother things ran today with my unexpected drop in.

By kindergarten boys who smile and grin and show me every stroke that they make with their pencils.

By fifth graders who run up to tell me the details of their new Indiana Jones hat and the imagined adventures that it took to get it.

By a youth pastor who gives us the four keys of a successful youth ministry:
1) Relationship
2) Relationship
3) Relationship
4) Relationship

By the faces that look up from a photo directory.

We do the things that will most help this particular group of kids to see Jesus in us. We look for the good, and we call it out. Even when good isn't "right."

It's almost the the holidays. Almost Advent. And, they can feel the end of normal time pressing down on them like a blanket.

Warm and comforting to some.

Wet and smothering to others.

So, we'll take advantage of this this space before the next colored block on the liturgical calendar, this last breath before the holidays scatter them to the winds.

This week's fourteen of them sit clustered around, turned all sideways and catty whompus, tucked in amongst feet and knees that seem to be going every direction at once, but somehow still mostly facing front.

They listen and type answers to the question that I ask when their attention starts to waver.

Their answers are simple but very much not so simple, right at this age where they are trying to figure out life and death and everything in between.

There's no magic in this. Not of the Hogwarts variety, at least. Sometimes, not even a lot of confidence. Nothing that I can whisper to make it easy or smooth or painless. But, there is Jesus. And, that is enough.

Beautiful Eyes

(7:11)

There are days.

There are days when you wipe blood off of the walls of the dodgeball pit and the kids point out the places that you missed.

There are days when you pass out bandaids.

There are days when it is all just another brand of normal.

When the seventh grade boys press in close and the one girl in the group tries to maintain her space in the squirming puppy pile of boy.

When ten seconds of intentionality can be enough to mend broken connections.

When they smile and grin and sometimes say exactly the opposite of what they mean - but it's okay, because we both know it.

When it isn't that it's easy, but rather that it works.

Days when sorry and forgiven are done without ever speaking the words. Where I have to go them, some of them, rather than the other way around, but, when I do, when two hands go down on tense shoulders, all is forgiven, forgotten, and they settle in close, determined, for this week, to be mine.

M*t** sits first, not quite center, not quite back. Not his normal spot. My spot. The spot where he angles each week so that he can see, but only occasionally sits.

M*tt** and K*r*n settle on my right, the rest of the kids follow, and we play a game, together, with another leader.

(Well, first the room descends into the chaos that can only come when you give 100+ middle schoolers pool noodles for a game of ninja, and the careful mask on my anxious one falls. 

People are hitting each other - hurting each other - and laughing, and he dislikes it with an intensity that I did not expect. An intensity that I last saw when the youth pastor showed them a video of a lamb being led to the slaughter.

He can't keep track of who to defend or how. And, he hates it.

Hates it enough to do something.

So I watch him fall to the ground and curl up in a ball. Let them hit him so that they are not hitting each other.

And, my heart leaps a little for this amazing kid.

This brave, scared, jumbled mess of thirteen year old thought and emotion who has glued himself carefully within the sphere of where my arms can reach.)

Worship. Music. Where they jostle again like puppies, and a few of them come and go and come back. Always come back.

"I'm glad that you don't make me spin and stuff any more."

J*yd*n says it, and we talk a little about how I used to lift him by the elbows until he was "jumping" or spin him around in the circles he wouldn't make on his own. He's getting too tall for that now, easily to my chin or higher. 

But, when the song ends, and his slow clap goes on for too long, I lay my hands over his, make them stop. And, he smiles.

We're all distracted. But, we smile a lot.

The tired, sullen looks that they came in with slip, and every antic is met with a grin and a glance that cranes around to meet mine.

For today, although they are antsy over the God thing to come, these kids have beautiful eyes.

Beautiful eyes that look at each other and see something worth protecting, something worth noticing and celebrating.

Beautiful eyes that see my presence with more clarity than my frazzled hair or my awkward attempts at this thing that we call church, that somehow instinctively know that this is a thing that we do together.

That let this be a new week to try again after we got our wires crossed.

That put my phone away without prompting.

That sit still and quiet and close to listen as a ninety-five year old man tells the story of salvation.

And, this is normal.

This blood and fear and laughter and courage. This is middle school. But, it is also magic.

Conflicted

Conflicted.

It might be the word of the week.

As if our insides were tugging in two different directions at once. Fighting against ourselves. Losing as often as we win.

The fifth graders feel it, talking over the top of each other, serious in the same moment that they are goofy. 

Racing to see who can come up with the most things to be thankful for, but writing down real things nonetheless - friends and grandparents, warm homes and supportive parents. Retelling Bible stories while the person next to them interjects with unicorns and rainbows.

Wired on an extra hour of sleep but discombobulated with the change.

And, I tend to forget how carefully we have choreographed the steps to our dance - until something happens to throw it out of sync.

There's a kid who has been making a habit of waiting for me in the children's wing, where we both teach first hour classes. We walk together to middle school. Two minutes, perhaps, that are all his.

This week, I leave early.

I'm watching some kids between services.

It's simple. Thirty minutes, maybe forty. Myself and another leader. We're scheduled to be finished before middle school even gets really started.

But, as we walk down into a game that is already underway, I can tell that I have thrown him for a total loop. Whatever his plans were for the intro time, I messed with them. Messed with the steady security that he thrives on.

Enter: conflict.

Because, for all that he doesn't have the words for it, for all that it wasn't intended to have anything to do with him at all, he feels betrayed.

And, when the kid who would jump in front of a dodge ball before he let it hit me begins to throw Sweet T arts at me - hard - I can see it in his eyes. Because, it's just this side of the playful roughhousing that makes up so much of middle school with these boys, and it's the only way that he know right now to communicate.

Barely thirteen is a rough age for words.

There isn't a right way to say the ones that he needs and still look cool, collected, in control.

"Where were you?" The girls manage to find the words, clinging to my arms - a little roughly, as if it is both accusation and lifeline. "No one knew where you were."

Some of the ones who ask barely do more than say hello on a typical Sunday, but it is a steadiness that they trust, a step to the dance that was missing, that threw off the rhythm of their morning.

The one with the Sweet T arts is daring me to fix it. Daring me to come and hold on until it is better - but also daring me to feel how he feels.

So, he stays close. But, not too close. Barely out of arms reach. Not smiling. Not looking me in the eye.  Only glancing over when he thinks my head is turned. Still. So very, very still.

We are close, but I am not forgiven.

It roils inside of him, in the set of his shoulders and the tilt of his head, this conflict of desires.

Reconciliation or retribution.

The speaker talks about the Fruit of the Spirit, and the girls in breakout group are brutally honest.

Sometimes, if I believe that I need patience in my life, it makes me feel patient and forgiving, BUT, sometimes, believing that makes me feel angry and impatient, anxious and worried. If I believed that and felt any of those things, I could always pray, but I might also de-stress - go on a run, spend time thinking, talk to someone, or sleep on it before acting.

I believe that I need love in my life, that I ned to be loving, and that makes me feel challenged and puzzled and confused, so I do something about it. I pray or ask someone or think about it or read the Bible.

They know that they want these things, but they know that they aren't these things. Not naturally. Not all the time.

There is this conflict, the fruit of the Spirit or the fruit of the flesh.

I love that they are safe enough here to speak truth, even when it isn't pretty. Safe enough to feel honestly, even when the feelings are not happy. Safe enough to act genuinely, even when the actions are not always on task.

These are my kids, my conflicted, messy kids.

I am not perfect, and neither are they. So, we dive deeper into grace, and, next week, we might come up on the other side.

Haiti Again

It's the first week of November, and, already, we're talking about Haiti.

They are juggling dates for next summer, trying to ensure that it will fit, pushing to see how much leeway they can find in the other bits and pieces that make up their lives.

Somehow, this is that important.

Not that it defines everything, but that it is somehow there, just under the surface, waiting to be woven into the fabric of who they understand themselves to be, who they understand God to be.

A God who lives in poverty and wealth. Who is always on time, even when the actual time isn't important. Who provides and comforts but allows for sickness and pain.

A God who soothes fears but pushes them beyond the limits of comfort. Who exists in community and in solitude. Who paints the night sky and the sunrise.

A God who allows for destruction but trains hands to rebuild.

A God who has made them.

Made them bold and brave and strong and scared. Who watches them laugh and dance and cry and grieve. 

Who has built them for honesty and late night talks on the roof. Who has designed them to help heal each other's hurts and stand guard over each other's fears.

A God knows their name and remembers their faces.

A God who delights every time that they come to Him and who cares deeply for a deeply broken world.

So, it's barely November, three months earlier than last year, but it is Haiti season.

Not yet the all consuming everything that will tinge every conversation and every interaction, but the rumbles are building, next year's team already beginning to sort itself out.

Because, it is in their blood. Deep enough in the fabric of this youth group that, if we choose, everything can be drawn back to Haiti.

It could be named as a strength, but also as a weakness. Whatever it is, it is infectious. And, not four months after we came home, they are talking about going back.

Even kids who have never been before use that phrase, talk about "going back." 

It is that much a part of who they are as a youth group. VBS in Haiti is something that "we" do. 

A week and a half that lasts all year.

Ravenclaw

4th and 5th grade fun night.

This group of them, at this age, are still so easily entertained.

We can keep them in the same room, for two solid hours, playing carnival type games, decorating backpacks and pumpkins, and they think that it is the best thing in the world.

And, it has more to do with it being this class of them, this group, than it does with their age.

Because, there are kids here, middle schoolers who are helping, who would have chaffed at this so badly. Kids from classes who would have had the marshmallows in their mouths or in the air, but not on the tables to construct. Who would have had sharpie on each other just as soon as on the pumpkins. Who would have scribbled rather than deal with a drawing that didn't turn out.

These guys are calm. "Easy." Talkative. Questioning. Careful. Thoughtful.

Every three years or so, there is a class like this, one that plays with words and ideas like they are toys. One that examines everything, picks it apart and tears it down to it's tiniest pieces and then decides what to do with the results.

They will go wherever there is knowledge, information, just as happy to sit as to run, and they spew forth stories, words, ideas.

Loyal, but tentatively, testingly so.

A strong sense of systemic justice, "This thing (idea, way of being or doing) is broken; We should think of a way to fix it," and, a careful counting of fairness.

Everything is thought through. Everything is considered. And, if they act, it is because they have decided that it is the right thing to do and the right time to do it.

There are rules to their worlds, and, unless those rules are proven to be unjust or unfair, they will follow them largely without comment. An unjust rule is simply brushed aside, considered and then ignored as if it never existed.

Out of control doesn't feel good to them, and, although they will use it occasionally to test unclear rules and boundaries, they are the most likely to ruefully apologize for it later.

This is the class most likely to shadow and mimic behaviors in order to learn. Most likely to be astoundingly capable and confident when they finally step out on their own. Most likely to write a letter, make a craft, play music, express themselves by creating something tangible.

We have them as our fifth grade, eighth grade, and eleventh grade classes. In theory, our second graders and preschoolers as well, although I don't know the little ones well enough to say for certain. Every third class, up through, at least, the class above mine.

If Hogwarts students were sorted by year, by group, these classes would be Ravenclaw.