It's been twelve months since the new youth pastor walked through these thin glass doors for his first official Sunday. "It's okay not to be okay," he stood in front of our students, almost as nervous about being the 'new guy' as they were about having someone new to trust, "just don't stay there."
It's been a roller coaster of a year since then, but there's a feeling that we are starting to get our feet under us, starting to find the patterns and ways of being that keep fear from having such a powerful hold. It's still messy and grace filled and broken and beautiful, but it's the kind of broken that feels like healing, like wild, untamed rightness in the midst of the mess.
Fifth grade girls curl up for our first week under the steps and weave unspoken prayer requests into the loom that was started at middle school camp, laughingly introduce themselves by the color of their toothbrush, and interlace their arms for a simple tapping game on the floor.
We finish like that, looking a little foolish, hands all woven between each other on the floor, while the groups around us sit neatly in their chairs, but, maybe, as one of the sixth grade girls slips in to join us, imperfect and together is the best place that we could be.
She walks with me to the middle school service where we are greeted by little brothers who cling to feet and slide across the polished floor, releasing to chase after a high schooler who is also a Sunday school teacher. And, it's one of those mornings where the games go over better than they have any right to and music has that boisterous, full body feel of being at camp, but the girls come into breakout groups subdued and quiet, as my giggly ones who normally try to talk over each other at a mile a minute wait for the new ones to fill the silence instead.
We never do get quite to the bottom of it, but there is Grace to cover. Grace for middle schoolers who use today to communicate in pokes and shoves and the sorts of physical whirlwinds that can say so much more than words at this age. Grace for leaders who remember how to respond in kind. Grace because Christ was once this age, and I am sure that the boy who grew up to gather together zealots and fishermen and tax collectors spent more than a few hours roughhousing in the Judaean countryside.
The crickets that normally descend on my high school breakout group vanish in a sudden moment, and we are voices layered over the top of each other, going over time, caught up in a discussion about Abraham and Isaac, as if, in this last week before we switch over to new groups, we have decided to prove that we can do this conversation thing. That we can circle up on the floor and this couch and wrestle through the reality and humanity of these very imperfect characters.
That we can find ourselves in their broken relationships and often faltering faith. That we can turn over the stones and ask the difficult questions and struggle with the implications the way that people have since long before Christ.
That, as we work through the particulars of getting kids into this communities that we call clusters and the messy, non-linear process of growth and healing, it's all okay. That there are good things on the other side, and that they are loved unconditionally, even in the midst of it all.
It's okay not to be okay. (Just don't stay there.)
