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.