Seen, Safe, Valued, Loved

The sun is almost warm by mid-day. The moon is large and nearly full, and it is a loud and bouncing sort of Sunday, as if the weather has released all of the bound up energy of winter. 

The fifth graders sing full and eagerly and, as a whole, more than a little off key. But, we finish, and the little one to my left smiles honestly, “Our harmony sounded perfect on that song.” Perfect because God has fifth grade ears that are still able to listen to the heart rather than the melody.

They ricochet off of each other in the hallway, hunting for the correct laminated card, comfortable, after almost six months, wrapping their tongues and their brains around these Minor Prophets with their crazy long names. 

In a week or two, we’ll leave this game for an outside one that focuses on Spiritual Gifts, running up and down the hill until they are breathless. But, for now, they throw arms and shoulders and set a safety line, where whatever is in your hands can no longer be wrestled away. For now, I settle them back into the main room with prayer journals and a pile of duct tape, and they get started, creating a patchwork quilt of color that they mark over with name after name. Praying with their hands. With the tearing rip of duct tape and the scent of sharpie. With the way that they verbalize the reasons for writing down these names. 

One of them gets my name tag. Another one is put in charge of making sure that the correct girl leaves with the correct parent, jokingly, because they know that the other leaders are watching out for them. Even when I leave early to go stand at a foyer table and talk about Haiti. 

Because, in between the rest of it, it is Haiti season again. Six months since we got home. Six until we leave. Dates, but no applications yet. Just this steadying, discombobulating sort of a knowledge that the thing that they have allowed to share so much of who they are is coming around again.

It's Haiti season.

But, also, it's the season for this. For middle schoolers who bounce off of each other and leaders, who borrow phones and jostle for places during music. One of the girls loves hand motions to songs, so we stand in the back and make it up as we go, letting the other two bump and push and circle around these spots that they have staked out, until the music slows and they finally settle.

Play a mutant version of capture the flag where the girls are sitting on the ground, and the boys line up to visually measure height, that spark in their eyes as they try to decide whether or not they can get enough clearance to jump. The eighth grader who can spend easy hours moving shipping cartons from one trailer to another but rarely speaks to me otherwise, gives me the same look that leads to pitch black games of hide and seek in the storage room and sends himself flying over my head.

His leader laughs and does the exact same thing.

This is the simple, chaotic part of middle school ministry, the slightly impulsive action and reaction that lets them be both so much more vulnerable and so much more responsible here than they are at school.

One of the seventh graders spends his morning making flying leaps to gently slam his shoulder into mine and then spinning off to whatever else catches his attention. There is volleyball/basketball/keep-away with a princess ball that has survived long months of being hurtled around this room, and a neon striped playground ball to replaced the one in the gaga pit that they popped last week.

Another seventh grader helps me to stack chairs after the evening service and then shrugs easily. "I want to go play basketball now."

At almost thirteen, simple words aren't always so simple, and this well mannered, responsible one rarely asks for anything, so it takes very little to eke out a yes. We shoot hoops until the other kids start to arrive, and it is far warmer than the snowballs that he has proven himself able to throw towards heads with astounding accuracy, but it means the same thing. You are seen. You are safe. You are valued. You are loved. So, let's throw miniature basketballs into miniature hoops, because this is still middle school, and it doesn't yet matter that Jessica doesn't know how to sport.

Intersect starts with an aborted attempt at a fire, now a charcoal puddle in the whipping wind, because youth leaders often learn best from what has gone wrong in the past, and we would rather not call the fire department tonight, thank you very much.

We pile into the building instead, a smallish crowd of us tonight to continue working our way through Genesis. Fewer kids than we had at this point last year. Missing a few leaders to Haiti trips and work obligations. The oldest of the boys band together to lead a group. Freshmen talk about their middle school years like they were decades ago.

Because, we are well into the grown-up young of Lent, the wild growth and mud and distraction of spring, where they remember to keep the game flexible and plan out their notes for next week's talk, but forget to empty the trash or wash the coffee mugs. Where the month seems to crawl by, but the weeks are an active blur. Where the nights are getting shorter, but, sometimes, the extra light just serves to illuminate our broken places. Where they hurt and they heal, and I would love to be able to simply speak truth in whatever language their souls were able to hear it. You are seen. You are safe. You are valued. You are loved.

Seniors come with more pointed versions of the same problems that my 7th and 8th graders have just begun to wrestle with, circling back to this story that we focused on during retreat. Cluster girls draw parallels between Exodus and Revelation or text questions about what they are reading.

We stand, towards the end, and join into this story put to music, "You split the sea so I could walk right through it; my fears are drowned in perfect love. You rescued me so I can stand and sing, 'I am a Child of God."

No longer slaves to fear, even when anxiety or scarcity rear their ugly heads. Free and known.

And, it all comes back down to this loud and messy work of lives bouncing up against one another. Of occasionally throwing shoulders and elbows. Of singing loud and out of tune. Of standing in the back and making it up as we go.

Of inhaling a little bit of chaos.

Contend - Snow Blast 2016

"Are you going to sit up front with us on the bus?"

My 7th and 8th grade shadows fall easily back onto this old habit, stretching the final hours of camp into long segments of Spot the Differences, Never Have I Ever, and Mad Libs. 

There are certain chunks of time that have long been property of the boys. Half of each bus ride. Snowball fights. The final hour of free time. Space after at least one meal. They stake out their claim, and we pull along whichever girls want to come along for the ride. 

Play pig after the gym has cleared from the whirl of volleyball games and dodgeball tournaments. Throw snowballs and attempt to whitewash faces and generally become soaking wet with the melting mess of it, even when there are pauses for tears and frustrations, the way that there always are when you pile up enough middle school lives, raw and together. 

Listen to jokes and riddles and pass off my phone a couple dozen times, because there is power to this. 

 Power to being clustered around the end of this dining room table as the boys trickle in and my girls filter out. To doing nothing more than listening and laughing and acknowledging when they are clever. To trying our very best at being Love and Grace who are stuck in the middle of that middle school mess that their brains and hearts and bodies are trying so hard to figure out. 

Power to pulling our girls from the group game and crunching through snow banks to take pictures in the empty skate park instead. To watching them be brave enough to drop in when the edge suddenly looks steep and strong enough to prove to themselves that they can run up and out the other side. 

Power to snowball fights where there are no real teams, but the frozen trickle melting down the back of my sweatshirt makes it feel like “throw snowballs at Jessica” might be a favored game. 

To sending girls off to their beds to draw and journal and process and to bringing them back together for raw, honest truth and water works that might just take us all by surprise. Except that it is Saturday night at camp, and they have been saving up all of the feels, storing them away in a bottle for just this moment. 

Because, in the midst of the uncertainty and change that rules their insides, middle school camp is made up of patterns. 

This leader comes down first for quiet time. Then that one. Then that one. This one brings the chocolate covered expresso beans and that one processes what they’re reading out loud.

We pray and read before we talk. Before we gather with the rest of the leaders for an official meeting. Before we pray again. Before we scatter to breakfast with our kids and start these days full of rhythms that repeat, year after year.

7th and 8th grade girls who pass around a bag of conversation hearts and murmur the truths that I have heard from so many lips before them, the ones that I would tattoo on their arms, so that, as they get older, they would never forget.

"We are: called, loved, kept, contenders, cherished, protected, servant, free, children, beloved, forgiven, embraced, befriended, #blessed."

"If we really, truly believed that God is our Rock, we would feel remembered, stable, loved, supported, and safe; and, because of that, we would act courageously and generously."

Ten girls who have a dozen different ways of expressing what the Gospel means to them. Who fill up pages with marker and washi tape, water color crayons and long paragraphs of reflection or creative writing. Because, oh do we ever have some girls who can write.

Girls who pass around packets of Marias and lemon drops while they ask big questions about truth and salvation, about choosing a religion for the convenience that it offers or living in one without really believing it, and about how on earth any of this is fair. About depression and divorce and death, science and theology and life. Who would talk for hours about all of these things that they are wrestling to get their heads around but are also itching to go play a game.

To run around in the dark and giggle and protect each other, to look foolish and to feel clever, to stay up too late eking out details from the one who is going to walk during New York Fashion Week, and to take a dozen more pictures out in the snow.

Goofy hand motions during worship with one of the girls and random dances with the same boys who save a seat for me on the bus and then find a way to have Jessica standing, so that we all three fit into the two person space.

And, the bus home stinks like cat pee and middle schoolers who have not showered, but we get back early enough for Superbowl parties that they may or may not fall asleep in the middle of. Back into the rhythms of everyday life. Praying that, somewhere between the ceiling shaking with the games of sixth graders above us and the floor shaking with the jumping throb of middle school worship, they found a better picture of God.

Freedom's Risk

High school retreat has a tradition of snowing on us the day that we leave, and Sunday morning holds true.

The deer are huddled away this morning, so we are each alone as we crunch our way through the early morning dimness, bringing down kettles for tea, looking for a bathroom that doesn't shriek when you turn on the light, the way that the one in our cabin does. Slowly congregating at these long cafeteria tables to read and pray.

Saturday, we fumble around for matches and firewood. They hand us a torch instead, knowing better than we do that the wood is icy and frozen. That fire might not come as easily as we like.

Sunday, we follow trails of footprints into the warmth, where we read and talk and pray, using words like 'popcorn' and 'shower' to pin down the ways that we are going to connect with the Divine, not because they make God better able to hear us. But, because the long tails of a Western European faith tradition lean towards order and turn taking.

"I like prayer showers." One of the girls shrugs, referring to the way that we pray on Wednesday nights, voices tumbling over each other in ripples and rhythms of connection, but holding space when one of the boys expresses discomfort. Combining the two.

'Order' and then 'chaos.' Questions that don't always have answers. Or, answers that aren't the ones that we are expecting. Risk and freedom, courage and fear all muddled up together.

Because, this weekend, this is how we do.

We tease out the frayed edges, and we do the slow work of mending this thing back together. We line up the stories, the markers, the memorial stones of Faithfulness in the midst of mess, and we hold space for brokenness. For still trying to figure this thing out.

Sometimes it is passing conversations about Hebrew verbs or breakouts where my girls come back with the phrase, "nobody in the Bible was having fun," and it's church speak for phrases that we probably aren't supposed to use with the kids.

There are hundreds of more and less acceptable ways of saying it, and we try out a dozen of them. Acknowledge that life sometimes hurts. Often hurts. That sometimes freedom seems harder than slavery. That plagues are no fun, the walls of the Red Sea can be terrifying, and the wilderness can look empty.

"...looked like the world was falling apart..."
"...hot mess..."
"...sucks..."

That, on the other side, lies the Promised Land.

"You live by, every day, meeting with [God]."

We pile into minivans and suburbans and caravan our way to camp, my seats filled with freshmen who sing along loud to obnoxious songs and a few good ones, who rock the car back and forth and search up old videos to watch their tiny selves dance and giggle and shriek down snowy hills at an octave that only 6th grade boys are capable of reaching.

And, it's all so very, very this group of kids.

From the crowd surfing and dance party that are carefully sectioned off in Saturday night's schedule, to free time basketball and hours spent breaking chunks of ice off of the lake. Breakouts where we talk about suffering and sovereignty and why on earth these ten plagues. Early mornings to pray. Candy canes and wasabi peas. Patterns and repetitions.

Kids who circle up into these groups to pray, and the leaders who step back to talk about the things that we see God doing in their lives. Goofy skits and communion in dixie cups that are growing soft with holding grape juice.

Borrowed gloves and more girls than beds, but making it work anyways.

A soccer ball that connects with a head and a shoulder that manages to take the skin off a nose. Dozens of rocks thrown onto the ice and warm sunlight during free time. Lamps catapulted from beach towels and tables smashed until they fit through a toilet seat.

There is Grace here.

Grace for exploring on the other side of barbed wire fences and jumping into half frozen lakes, even after you have been told not to. For the kids who are with us every week and the ones who are just trying it out. For hikes and prayer, morning devos, and large group games. And, for missing the exit and coming the long way home.

Old habits in Haiti leaders who ask for ibuprofen or bandaids when their boys are sore or bleeding from playing too hard. In kids who laughingly tell their cabin mates that "mom" has extra shoelaces if they need them. In Happy Day hoe downs and quieter songs where hands and hearts learn a little more of what it means to move in surrender. In the ones who want to ask a thousand questions until this crazy, mystery of a thing begins to make sense and the ones who simply want to pull in as close to a leader as they can find an excuse for, until the knots on their insides begin to settle. And, the ones who somehow manage both.

Because, we know these stories.

Not just this Exodus story with its epic sweep and constant echoes. But, these smaller stories. The way that Haiti and John Day and clusters and teaching smaller kids all tie together into this knot of a high school youth group. The way that glass vases shatter when you hit them with a bowling ball. The echoes of our voices in a room that is big enough to swallow us whole, and the smell of maple bars on Sunday morning.

We know how to climb up onto top bunks for cabin time and where to stack the chairs when we are done with them. Know to bring hand towels and soap, but still haven't quite figured out how to keep from muddying the cabin floor with fifteen pairs of shoes or fumble around in the dark without knocking over ever present mugs and water bottles.

It is dark when I leave the cabin in the morning, dark when we finally settle into bed at night. Long hours of daylight and darkness that we fill up in between. The way that God's people always have. Following fire by night and cloud by day. Staying close. Forgetting the miracles almost as soon as they come. But, writing them down.

So that we don't forget.

In the end, the muddy footprints don't matter. In the end, it is Holy. The garbage that I find tucked into nooks and crannies of the minivan and the tarps full of intentionally broken glass. The lives that we have smashed together in a weekend of the sort of community that might be more "real life" than the "real life" that we say we're reentering. It's one of those retreats that's going to take a little coming back from. A beginning, a pause, a repetition, not a full story in it's own right.

The heater blasting in the background while we sing song after song on Saturday night, keeping the room warm while slush turns back to ice outside, even though my mental picture is a sunrise rooftop on the equator.

Carrying chairs down from the rooms where my high school youth group once held a winter retreat, played these same games, sat at these same tables, felt this tangible sense of the Holy.

A car ride home where we twine together Haiti and Royal Family, middle school ministry, elementary Sunday school, and a hundred thousand moments that have brought us here. Hours of dress up tent and swimming holes. Broken shower heads and ninjas through the church. Tap tap rides and familiar Sunday School rooms.

"...and God saw the children of Israel, and God knew."

We didn't start these stories this weekend, and we certainly didn't finish them here. There is messy work left to be done. But...

God is faithful. Freedom is possible. And, Christ is our reward.