Doing Life

High school retreat.

So close on the tail of middle school camp that my head spins a little trying to hold on to the differences. Trying to remember how this works. This thing that we have done so many times before. And, yet, never quite like this.

Party. Adventure. #change.

The last three years have been a whirlwind of differences and similarities. But, nothing quite like this.

This one feels a little more like an extra long cluster than anything else. Like we showed up in someone's living room or basement on a Wednesday night and simply forgot to leave, so some kind person arranged to find us food and beds alongside half a dozen other clusters who similarly forgot to pack it up and go home.

We sit by clusters on the bus, at snack, at chapel, and talent show, and all camp game. Sleep in cabins divided by cluster. Break out by cluster for small group discussions and for prayer.

Even when my girls organize to combine with some of the boys for the talent show, it's two entire clusters that they meld.

They're goofy, and we have fun all weekend. Play games that involve giant sling shots, bowling balls used to decimate glass vases, or massive amounts of toilet paper. Go on hikes. Roast marshmallows. Play capture the flag. Come back to the cabin to find them buried under sleeping bags on the porch, laughing and dissecting song lyrics.

There is a giant relay race, and they jump in fiercely competitive, sweating and breathless from running faster, jumping up and down more quickly, more often, working to make up the advantage held by the larger teams.

Because, they really do work together well, this most drama free group of high school girls that we could ever hope to have.

They casually reference reading Amos or Chronicles or Lamentations, and our college freshman who is back to play on the worship team calls them out on it. Tells them how awesome they are. How cool it is to be in high school and be reading chronologically through the entire Bible.

It is cool. And, it's crazy.

Crazy that they think of this as normal. Crazy the kinds of things that they ask questions about. Crazy the kinds of things that they have answers for.

Somehow, this is normal in their world, this kind of time and space where nothing is too sacred to ask, where dialogue is valuable, where there is enough going on in their own heads and hearts that it doesn't matter what the speaker says. Doesn't matter when nearly every word of it whooshes past without making contact.

"We could just ask Jessica questions," one of them offers up when it looks like we're going to have more cabin time than we know what to do with, "and listen to her talk about the Bible for hours."

Instead, they curl up on the top bunks and just talk. Answer each other's questions, sometimes with the same words that we have used to answer them in the past.

Questions that, mainly, revolve around loving people.

How do we love? Who do we love? Are there limits? What does it look like to love well? What do we do when life and people are hard and messy and hearts and minds seem to be tugging us every direction at once?

They pray for us. We pray for them. They pray for each other.

Nothing goes quite the way that it was planned, and, even as the weekend passes, we talk about the differences, about the things that are and the things that aren't, about the strangeness of proposing to know what it is that God has in store.

And, I wonder if the leaders feel it more than the kids, the strange disconnect between the things that are happening around us - the words that are coming out of the speaker's mouth, the falling apart of anything that we had thought to put down on paper or carefully diagram in chalk - and the strangely settled familiarity of what is happening within us. Within them.

We worry about things that they were too tired or too distracted to hear, and they echo back to us that God is great, God is gracious, God is glorious, and God is good.

They laugh and tease and spend the bus rides making brothers do push ups in penance for pranks pulled and discussing the finer points of theology.

They let the boys load the bus and unload it. Let them deliver the luggage to our cabins on Friday night and pick it up again on Sunday morning. 

They stand back and grit their teeth and let the guys begin to sort through these realities of what it means to serve. They spend the weekend looking for a way to show gratitude without playing into gender stereotypes. 

And, being my girls, they solve their problem on the way home by simply jumping into the luggage compartments and beginning to pass out suitcases and sleeping bags before anyone can think to tell them not to. 

Because, service goes both ways.

Because, there aren't any clear cut answers to any of this. No dark lines or scheduled epiphanies. Just the thick, heavy flakes that send us home on Sunday morning and blanket the ground behind us in white. Just the quiet peace of protection in the midst of a storm.

Just a whole bunch of people who happen to be doing life together.

SnowBlast 2014

11 girls. 6th graders. A cabin full of wild, squealing, giggling, whirlwinds. The one thing I used to swear as a middle schooler I would never lead.

But, I love them.

These goofy dance parties and children rolling on the floor like puppies. These explorations out into the bitter cold. The ones who shove me down snow hills and the ones who sit on top of me to get closer to the fire.

The stories that we read after lights out to put them to sleep and the constant flow of words onto the mirror.

Because, we put words and color everywhere. Posters on the walls and doors. Markers for the mirror. Notes and quotes and verses every morning. 

Notebooks and colored pens and pencils for chapel time - white pages that they fill with bullet pointed lists and sketched out bits of stories that the speaker tells. He fully has their attention, and they write down more than I have ever seen, capturing thoughts and bits of truth.

We give them ten minutes of quiet time to draw or journal. A stack of construction paper to make cards for the injured youth pastor. Markers and scissors and glue. Sharpies. Colored pencils. Pens.

Triangles that they fill with thought after thought. Young voices leading each other through their favorite tool. "Tell me a thought, a truth you heard the speaker say." "If we really, truly believed that…"

They speak the truths to one another over and over and over again, and, as the weekend goes on, they begin to trust the girls more, begin to trust us more. Begin to find the real words to explain what it is that they mean, what it is that they're thinking and feeling.

BEAUTIFUL & MERCIFUL

PROTECTED

DEPENDENT

They wrap up the triangles with carefully considered words, throwing out a half dozen ideas each time before finally settling on these ones.

They've seen the truths, heard them, spoken them, written them. Bowled us over with their honesty and depth of insight. With the respect that they show as eleven wildly different girls function as a unit.

With the respect that they show to the other kids at camp. To the boys who come knocking on the door for this reason or that one. To the leader who has to disappear from time to time to MC. To the older girls who had claim over me "first."

"I don't feel special anymore," one of mine laughs at me as we stand by the fire eating cookies, waiting for a sixth grade boy to report back that the youth pastor's cards have been delivered, "my counselor knows everyone."

She give a fake pout and goes back to eating her cookie, no more truly perturbed than the other girls who grin and laugh and point their fingers as they accuse me of "making purple" by sitting to talk with middle school boys.

"Your kid…" One of them prefaces her stories about a seventh grade boy, as if I somehow have ownership - responsibility - over this child. 

"Your kid said…" 

"Where's your kid?"

"Did you see M*t**?"

This one who asks to play king of the mountain of the highest mound of dirt and snow we can find. Who laughs as we go skidding down the bottom. Who shows me his smashed finger dozens of times and jumps to my defense when some of my other kids white wash me with snow.

Sixth grade boys who check in when their counselor is missing and come find me for help with a bracelet. Eighth grade boys who take selfies on my phone and set alarms for odd hours of the night/morning. Seventh graders who feel like they have known me forever.

We spend long chunks of free time just sitting by the fire talking, long hours on the bus. Play Mad L*bs and Fl*ppy Bird and laugh at the antics of their caffeinated selves.

Head down to the frozen stream to poke at ice with sticks and rocks, scramble through trees, explore, even though they know every inch of this place already. To cement it in their minds, in case, next winter, we don't come back.

We look up pictures of the camp we are going to this summer and watch videos from winter camp last year. Scatter for a dodgeball tournament and then make our slow way back to the fire.

"Jessica!" my girls come running in at intervals, breathless with cold and the effort of not smiling as they tell me some story about why I need to solve an emergency in the cabin right this instant. So, I run out, back to our cabin that smells like wet sock and fart and perfume, and they jump out to scream at me or to pelt me with pillows until no one can see past long hair and laughter.

"We're all family here," I told one of the newer boys on the bus ride up. "A very lopsided, dysfunctional family, but family. And, we treat each other with respect."

It was a correction at the time, a gentle way to redirect behavior. But, this weekend, it seems to be working hard to prove itself true.

Family that giggles and laughs and pulls into a tight circle to eat chocolate marshmallows and talk about God things. That gets wet and cold and bruised and dances awkwardly when they play our songs. Sleeps in cabins that are too hot or too cold but rarely just right.

That watches out for one another and makes sure that everyone feels as safe as they possibly can.

Family that bickers a little when they get tired and close to home, but that still reacts to each other with all of the respect and patience that they can muster. Family that does competitive well but loses poorly.

Family that has snowball fights. That slips on ice and hauls each other back to their feet. That laughs about farts and poop and people's reactions to getting shocked. That has weird rules and expectations that kind of, sort of, mostly work.

That is as radically different from each other as we are the same. 

Confident. Insecure. Loud. Quiet. Independent. Constantly surrounded by others. Passionate singers. Totally unmoved by corporate music. Playful. Serious. Athletic. Clumsy. Nearly every end of every spectrum we can find.

It isn't perfect. But, they don't expect it to be.

Instead, we take our imperfect mess, and we wrap it up in sugar and bacon and way too many Monst*rs and shake it all up with a knot of middle school hormones and emotions.

And, because God is faithful, we can somehow step back and call it good.