Grace Upon Grace

Royal Family Kids Camp has a way of making the rest of the world come to a halt.

Shootings and protests and the world's new found ability to wander around and 'catch' imaginary creatures all stop at the gate, or, perhaps, somewhere a little farther down the highway, where we first pick up cell signals again.

Everything focuses in, centers, becomes about this moment and these campers and the things that are happening right here, right now, and nowhere else.

"That's why you go to a big training before camp," my eleven year old leans in close with a soft shake of her head when the half dozenth pause in the movie pulls a frustrated groan from thirty-six campers, "so you can learn how to not get angry at kids and to smile."

She doesn't have the word for it, but I know what she means. She means that these red shirted 'grown ups' are overflowing with Grace.

Grace for littles who get stuck, who get sad, who get angry, who get anxious, or happy, or excited, or overly tired. Grace in counselors who let their little boys comb through their hair with dinner forks and who curl the hundredth strand of little girl hair for fancy dinner.

Grace when kiddos wake up belting out Gold in the early pre-coffee hours of the morning (Proverbs 27:14) and when we stumble our way through dances that the kids have learned at Breakfast Club. Grace when we stay up late putting together scrapbooks and writing letters and Grace when we get up early to shiver our way to a Polar Bear Swim.

Camp is marked by counselors who help to 'hunt' chipmunks and catch every spider that we come across, by hands gently cupped around moths that made the mistake of resting on the nurses' cabin and peering into branches for hidden caterpillars.

Camp is hula hooping and tea parties and costumed children who wander through meals and activity stations as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

It is CITs and staff members who drop whatever they are doing to walk us to the bathroom or watch us make our way back to the cabin, counselors who end the week realizing how very little they have found the time to shower, and campers who manage to have a 'great day,' even when the big feelings are trying take control of their little hearts and minds and bodies.

It's girls who trust enough to let you save them from bees and who ask to sit with their brother for a meal, because they don't get to live with him right now. It's kids who lean in close for the scary parts of the movie and who finally, on the very last day of camp, decide that you are allowed to braid their hair.

And, it is re-doing those braids three times before lunch, so that they will still look 'perfect' when she gets home.

When your camper who spent last year blacking out every word of her letters to you finally sends ones that you can read, because it's less scary to claim you, now that you aren't quite so close. When you spend hours practicing the hand motions to the eleven year old's favorite Music*lly and the nine year old doesn't have the patience for you to braid both sides of her hair at once.

When the bobble heads have been painted and the birdhouses/bug barns/tool boxes have been built. When there isn't a single screw left to undo in take apart and when dress up is wet and muddy. When their earbuds have been practically glued into their ears since Birthday Party and their name signs are rolled up into purple trash bags for the trip home.

When camp is over, we can only pray that they remember Grace and Love.

That they remember that not all grown ups get angry at kids. That some grown ups smile and ask them how their day has been and make sure that they always have enough to eat.

That, no matter what comes next, there will always be a place in the mountains where time comes to a halt.

Brownie Sunday

We spend hours together as a Haiti team on Brownie Weekend. Story team meeting. Training. Brownie baking. Sign making. Supply collecting. Learning personalities and going over packing lists. Setting things up. Tearing things down. Selling hundreds of brownies in between.

And, it is a beautiful, sticky, exhausting sort of a thing, with kids who jump in to wash dishes, wipe floors, carry trash cans. Sit and wait.

There is a lull early on Sunday, a long line of teenagers flopped against floor and cupboards in the hospitality room, and they pull out their phones to practice Creole.

These are our kids.

Focused, efficient, stubborn, willing to fight for the things that they see as right and true.

Playful, passionate, responsive, responsible.

One of my new sixth graders has established herself as my intern for the day, collecting name tags and counting heads in elementary Sunday school, letting me pull her into the game, and then running dozens of circles with me. Around and around and around the church, as we check on kids and brownies and stations.

She checks the number of steps that we have taken -- 5.25 miles between the start of church and the end of it -- and adds to the passcode on my phone that was set by a once-upon-a-middle-schooler, who is now her brother's Sunday School teacher.

Adds to it, but doesn't change it, because the most important thing to the kids about Jessica's phone is that everyone knows how to get in. The older sets of my Sunday school kids knew the code for the storage room, and still know it, eight years later. The younger sets know the code for my phone.

Middle school is a combination of skidding in late, just in time for the game, and ducking out early, with an in between of hugs from eighth graders whenever they think they might have found an opening and sixth graders who have picked up a habit of gripping my arms like baby monkeys.

More brownies.

Clean up. Church. Brownies. Intersect with games that involve leftover brownies.

Drinks for the kids from the closest coffee shop and a couple of students who I haven't seen since last summer but who tell me that they would like to start coming. Breakouts in a stuffy room and long talks afterwards as we try to sort out the intricacies of a Haiti team that can wound each other with the same efficiency that they use to clean tables or slice brownies.

Because, these kids are worth fighting for. This team is worth fighting for.

They are worth longs days and awkward conversations and learning to lead them in the best way that we possibly can.

They are messy. We are messy. We are going to a place that is messy.

But, there is beauty and grace in the midst of the mess.

In the midst of nervous 6th graders and 8th graders who are having all of the feels. In middle school leaders who share their testimonies and elementary schoolers who giggle as a game of Blog Tag sends them flying off across the grass.

In freshmen girls who help me pull drink cups out of the trash cans and empty the liquid into a slop bucket and juniors who are always willing to close our breakout group in prayer.

In graduated seniors who go straight from brownies to a training for Royal Family Kids Camp and in a youth pastor who has proven himself willing to walk this road.

Even when we are elbow deep in ice cream buckets, there is Grace to cover.

Grad Weekend

Grad weekend is a series of weekends this year, and, I am reminded that, once upon a time, I wrote "letters" to kids who might never read them. So...

To the graduated seniors,

Have I told you recently how proud I am of you? 

Life is complicated and messy, and high school is it's own very unique kind of a struggle. I am proud of the way that you have handled it. The ways that you have let yourself grow and change and the ways that you have stayed uniquely yourself. It isn't easy work, learning to sharpen each other, as iron sharpens iron, without slicing someone open by accident.

Because, you've had to learn that you are not weapons, not your words, not your actions, not your knowledge.

Garden shears and kitchen knives are no less sharp than swords or bayonets, but they are tools for creating, rather than for tearing down. And, you have graduated into a world that is in desperate need of building up. Orlando. Syria. Brexit. US elections that seem almost too caricatured to be true. This isn't a world that needs another weapon.

In the midst of that brokenness, live the Love and Grace and Mercy, that we couldn't possibly have spent enough hours talking about - but that I pray that you experienced and continue to experience every time that you turn around.

Church people don't always get it right. I don't always get it right. You won't always get it right. But, it is the most beautiful thing in the world to keep on trying, to live like Grace is worth it.

Grace is worth it.

Look for beauty in the midst of the mess and run towards it with everything that you have.

You know just as well as anyone that beauty is sometimes a child at Royal Family Kids Camp who wants to play kickball in a penguin costume and sometimes a day in Haiti that doesn't go as planned. Sometimes it is a brilliant sunset and sometimes it is sitting beside a friend who has had a terrible week.

Beauty is Grace and Grace is Beauty, and sometimes it is all a terrible mess, because humans are messy.

But, you aren't defined by your mess. (And, neither is anyone else.)

You are Beloved. Redeemed. Seen. Known. Loved.

You are Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Powerfully Loved, and Uniquely Gifted by a God who is Great, Gracious, Glorious, and Good, and who is a calling you to a place of #freedom where you can be #changed by that great love.

Congratulations, you did the thing.

You graduated from high school, and you've got the rest of life stretched out long before you, but don't get so caught up in the big things that you forget to pay attention to the small ones. Pray just about as often as you breathe. Look for Jesus in the Bible, but also look for Him in the faces of friends and strangers.

Climb the hill. Jump in the river. Swim in the lake. Do ridiculous things just for the sake of doing them.

Make dinner with your family. Text your friends at 3:00 in the morning when you need to talk. Spend your time and your energy on other people and take time for yourself to recharge.

Love God. Love people. And, remember who you are.

I'm proud of you!

Prayer Like Breathing

"I think that I need self control." One of the girls who has been nonsense talking a mile a minute laughs when I repeat the directions a second - third - time and her brain finally slows down enough to hear them.

"Maybe." My own twisting line of sticker dots is headed towards the 'patience' line, and I hand her a sheet of brightly colored circles. Because, there simply 'happens' to be the exact same number of children as there are sticker sheets, so that even my oldest-sibling always-watching-out-for-everyone-else kiddos don't have to think twice or figure out how to share.

We're a little wild this week, hands and arms and legs bumping and jostling and bouncing off of each other, as if the action itself can prove that they are real and safe and loved, and her eyes widen as I repeat the instructions. Choose a character trait that you need help with and talk to Jesus about that thing as you put down a row of stickers.

"I think that I am going to just put mine random."

She deals with anxiety by trying to distract herself. Asking to go to the bathroom after she has participated in something in front of the large group. Playing with the buckle on her Bible during story. Keeping constant watch on the clock. Randomly placing stickers so that she doesn't have to worry about messing up.

At almost eleven, she is only beginning to learn about this Grace that covers us. Grace that knows her past and her future, knows every well earned fear in her little heart.

We first met at RFKC. She has every reason for this constant fight for acceptance, approval. But, there is something magic that falls over these girls when they pray with their hands.

Trace labyrinths with their fingers. Weave strips of fabric into miniature looms. Cootie catchers. Paint. Duct tape. Markers.

Sticker after sticker after sticker.

They go calm and silent in the sunshine, forget about the grass poking through the blanket and the third graders who are within shouting distance farther down the lawn. Forget about sore feet and worries about what we are going to do at camp over the 4th of July. Forget about the littles screaming and laughing on the play set across the parking lot and the dogs in the truck closest to us. Forget about everything but their conversation with the One Who Hears.

If we have practiced anything this year, it might be the fact that prayer is always a thing that is worth fighting for. That, when our bodies are wild and our minds won't stop and our hearts are full, there is all the more reason to pray.

Some weeks I almost give it up. Surrender to the chaos. Slap a few new pieces into their notebooks and take them to the hill to run off some steam. But, this is worth fighting for.

They can feel changes nipping at their heels. The end of the school year. Transitions. Summer. And, we spend the first part of our morning going over the dates. Over and over and over again. This is what is happening. This is when it is happening. This is what there will be to eat. This is who will be there.

Rip papers. Take pictures. Run up and down a grassy slope and scream at the top of our lungs that, "Jesus loves you!" Play keep away in the hall. Trade name tags. Misplace Bibles more times than ought to be possible.

Grace. 

Grace that shows up in the middle and in between. 7th grade girls who help me search out glue sticks for the 5th graders and who fill my phone with a hundred pictures of the same carpet square, doodling over the selfies left behind by 7th grade boys. Kids who whisper prayer requests when they are supposed to be listening to a lesson.

 Shoulders that bounce off my arm just a little above the elbow as one tells me about being chased around the playground by four-year-olds and a trip across the parking lot to search for quarters for another who wants to buy cookies. Made up song motions with the one who stands a hairsbreadth from my arm, almost occupying the same space. Two with almost matching names who ping pong off of my sides the way that they were taught by an older brother.

A freshman boy who stops to talk in the foyer, "which one do you like better, middle school or high school?"

Both.

It's one of those weeks, where we walk out of a leaders' meeting to find high school boys on the roof, because sensory seekers, y'all. The middle and elementary schoolers aren't the only ones bubbling over with this wild energy that comes with sunshine and warmth and summer feeling several weeks closer than it actually is.

We play musical chairs in the parking lot and cram into newly formed rows of pews. Count kids. Watch carefully. Rejoice when the ones who could choose to disappear mid activity don't. Pray and sing and listen and pray some more.

Grace.

One of the senior boys takes his turn to share with the younger classes, and I am blinded once again by the faithfulness of Divine Love.

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever."

Last week's senior has been going to Haiti with us since he was a wide eyed freshman, learning valuable lessons about sunscreen and giving piggy back rides until his shoulders bled.

This week, we hear from a senior who didn't live here his freshman year at all.

But, still.

He tells his story, and I remember marking dates on my calendar to pray for his sister's surgery. Praying through the long weeks that led up to that point. Sitting in an unfinished basement with cluster girls scattered on half a dozen pieces of furniture and hearing the outcome.

He was only in ninth grade, fourteen, maybe fifteen years old. Incredibly uncertain about this whole Jesus thing. But, one of my girls had a friend in another state who was sick and needed prayer. So, we prayed. And, now he's sitting here telling us about it.

"There [we] come to the shocking, but at the same time self evident, insight that prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence." The Wounded Healer, pg 17

Grace.

Grace even for leader hearts that sometimes need a reminder: prayer is a thing worth fighting for.

By the time they graduate, I have prayed a couple of hundred hours for each one of these precious kids in their high school years alone.

There are plenty of leader things that I will never come close to perfecting, but I can do this thing. I can pray for them like breathing. Type out prayers or write them long hand. Talk out loud in my car or silently in my head. Pray in words and pictures and feelings. Pray for their courage and their growth, their peace and their comfort. Pray that they would know their value and know how to value others.

Pray for boldness and healing, curiosity and security. Pray for answers to questions and questions to answers. Pray that they would know this Love.

When they are scared, sick, hurt, anxious, excited, exhausted and the Spirit nudges, I can pray. When old hurts or doubts worm their way to the surface, when lies whisper in their ears and a thousand different things keep them awake at night. When my Atlanta stuck self can feel the exact moment that they pull into compound in Fond Parisien or into the church in Fond Cheval. When there is nothing left to offer. When I can't do anything else.

I can pray.

Careful dot after careful dot. Connecting stories. Finding quiet in the midst of overlapping conversations, jostling feet and elbows and thrown hips.

Prayer like breathing.

It isn't much. But, perhaps it is.

Shout for Joy

Across the globe, churches are beginning their liturgies for this Fourth Sunday of Easter, "Shout for joy to God, all the earth..."

"We went through fire and through water," the Psalm continues when I go to look it up, "yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance."

Lutheran readings come out of the twenty-first chapter of John. The gentle love of a risen Savior. "Children," he calls to the disciples, "do you have any fish?"
"No."
They had been up all night. Nothing. Frustration, perhaps. Confusion at being back in this place that they thought they had left behind. And, then...a man.

I wonder, as they moved their nets to the other side, if they had begun to dare. Dare to hope that this stranger on the shore might not be a stranger after all. If the nets filled and their hearts didn't jump with Peter as he threw on his cloak and ran splashing through the waves.

"Shout for joy to God, all the earth."

In our own strange way, we find ourselves joining in, celebrating the beautiful things that God has done. There are balloons in the hallways and snacks by the doors. Servers who offer treats and beach balls that fly through the service.

Sunshine. Laughter. The careful tying together of these layers of stories.

Celebration. Frustration. Confusion. Food.

The messy beauty of throwing on our cloaks even as we jump out of the boat -- because Jesus is here!

I have a couple of barefoot girls in amongst my 5th graders, almost-middle-schoolers who kick off their flip flops before service, leaving them beside mine in our space under the stairs. While the shepherds pray, they press their faces up towards the window in the door and watch the goings on. Watch as we talk to Jesus about their barefoot selves.

Oldest siblings with eyes that glow when I slip my lanyard around their neck and leave them to check each other in. Girls who save me a seat when I slip away to get the power point started and grin when I come back, having given a crash course to the high schooler who must have been standing in just the right spot in the hallway to be emergency recruited.

Because, today, that's a little bit how we roll.

Foot races in the gym. Question and answer time. Notebooking at the speed of light. Parent pick-ups. And, then they are off.

The 7th grade girls are already here, two of them waiting in the doorway, beautifully certain that, when they don't know what's going on, they can find a leader.
"It's set up different," they shrug. "I didn't know if I could go in."

It is different. It's very different this morning. But, they practice grace and respect and honor. Practice flexibility and good humor. Make the most of the sunshine. And, a few of them crawl deep into the bushes for a game of sardines. Dirty. Scratched up. Together.

Middle school is messy today, in ways that have nothing to do with the kids. But, there is prayer and there is worship, and, as much as our leaders hearts might want to shield them from from anything that might touch this hour and a half of sacred time, there is, in the midst of the brokenness -- because of the brokenness -- a beautiful picture of the Body. A Body that is bigger than simply the people who typically occupy this room.

Step in to take up the slack. Cover for each other's weaknesses. Pray. Show grace. Honor everyone.

"Children, do you have any fish?"
"No." Our hands are empty. Our hearts have been poured out. We're at a loss. But...there is a man on the shore.

Jesus.

The Body of Christ comes, in part, in the form of a woman who steps in to seamlessly lead our kids through an explanation of the role that they played in the celebration, to direct them towards other leaders for music, and to speak for a few moments before they go. As if catching runaway trains were the most natural thing in the world.

We shoo them out the door and, for once, clean up the remains without any smaller, helping hands.

Freshmen slip through on their way from the high school service and joke about my no longer "pregnant" belly. We stand in the hospitality room and eat berries out of tiny cups with tinier forks. Go out to lunch. Talk about Haiti and gymnastics on horseback and a dozen things in between.

Sunshine. Service. Intersect.

High schoolers who are full to overflowing with the warmth and sunshine of spring break. Camping trips. Game nights. Prom "proposals."

They pull out the frisbee and there is a tae kwon do demonstration that ends with a broken board in the parking lot. It's a little bit celebration and a lot a bit everyday. This is fish and bread on the shore. Doing our level, messy best to care for these kids, who are loved more than they will ever know. To care for each other.

To laugh and learn names. To play a game. Sing some songs. Listen to a lesson.

Because, the first answer to, "...do you love me?" is, "Feed my lambs."

What Love Looks Like

Friday night of spring break finds seven high school leaders dressed up in wacky costumes and scattered around a shopping center. Because, yes, we love these kids.

Love them enough to become a pregnant woman, a tourist, an old lady, Waldo, Moses. To stand behind clothing racks and make new friends with employees who laugh a little harder with each new group that comes in.

Find a leader. Take a picture. Move to the next store.

Leader hunt. Ice cream. Hang time. Home.

But, as we linger through the end and talk about missions trips for the dozenth time this week, I am reminded not only of the fact that it is Haiti season -- because it is clearly Haiti season! -- but of how very far these kids have come.

Through an old youth pastor, to no youth pastor, to a new youth pastor who has shed his Moses costume to play ping pong and straighten couches, his eyes bright as he spills out ideas in the moments after the last of the kids have scattered.

Through Haiti trips and John Day trips and winter retreats.

#change

#dangerous

#IDinJC

#freedomsrisk

From nights with a dozen kids to nights with ninety and everything in between.

Game nights. Clusters. The weekly dance of gathering in this place.

Shooting stars and wildfires. Long hours of prayer and Happy Day hoe downs. Hundreds of garbage bags filled and emptied and dozens of hours spent cleaning or painting walls.

They have stuck with it. Made a home here. Made a family.

And, even when we look a little wacky. When we sometimes can't find each other in stores and a younger set of the boys can't help but poke at the pillow and ask a million questions about the "baby."

When we are scattered on camping trips and family vacations, and students and adults alike are already crunching the numbers of Haiti logistics. Even when...

There is something in this room that speaks of Love.

Waterfall

It's a weekend for standing too close to a waterfall. 

For reaching out to touch the nearest, trickling edge as it eats away at this ancient rock. For trusting to a stranger's long left rope as you scramble up and down steep trails. For letting the rain mist you and the spray soak you and for climbing up through crevices that hundreds of feet have traveled before you.

For driving away and coming home. For hikers that follow each other, sometimes from a distance and sometimes close enough to ask questions, as we pick our way over unmarked trails that are wider down here than they appeared from the cliff edge.

Because, sometimes, you have to get closer than the placard and the railing.

And, it sounds an awful lot like an analogy in hindsight, although it was never intended to be one. Never intended to be anything more than an impulsive need to get out of town and find something wildly and undeniably bigger and older than my single and simple life.

A need for twisting roads and green fields and towering pillars of stone, for finding a place where water cuts through the desert, not with the partially tamed and well utilized breadth of the Columbia, but with the rush of rapids and a thunder that floats like clouds.

It’s a weekend for 5th grade girls to run up and down this hill until the wind steals the breath from their lungs, to play this game simply because I’ve told them that it is the time of year to play. Because they know that the girls who went before them played this. Because I promised that we would go outside. 

They are too wriggly for proper explanations, rolling and sliding down half dead grass, shivering, verbally clambering over the top of each other. Landing in piles of helter skelter limbs when they can’t quite sort through who is going to jump on who when the Caller yells out the word “service.” 

Service means landing bridal style in each other’s arms. Leadership require forming a line. And, for this week, we don’t get any further than that. We leave the watercolors and the glue and explanations for next week, and, instead, they practice trusting that I will catch them when they come flying through the air. 

They smack each other with floor pillows when we maybe should be praying. Doodle and whisper their way through the story. Need the same instruction repeated a second and third time, too excited about finishing to go outside to actually finish so that we can go outside. 

But, we make it. We smile and we make messes and we quite literally tumble our way through.

  And, Sunday fades into a Monday where the kids at Bible club seem to have gotten the memo that this is a week for strange moods and holding space for each other. Space for first graders to use song time as an excuse to be held onto and story to curl as close as "pockets on the floor" rules will allow. For the 4th grade boy who grins every time that he stretches out and uses my shin as an uncomfortable pillow.

For kinders who come to run foot races as we review the story and first graders who slip into the kinder group to make a craft.

*s***h and H**d*n lay nose to nose on the floor, heads bent in concentration over the picture that they are working on. D*nn* comes up for the millionth hug. We split the final rice crispy into seven equal pieces, so that everyone can get an extra bite.

These are familiar paths. Ropes that we have laid down to guide each other over the steepest places. Unmarked and always changing. Wider when we trust to the next step than when we try to picture everything that lies ahead.

It's a rainy, cloudy, green in the middle of the desert, waterfall sort of week.

And, sometimes the line between miserable and beautiful is mainly formed by how many times we remember to stop and breathe. 

Remember to trust to Grace.

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.

Flinging Yourself Godward: Grace

 There is a picture saved, somewhere a few weeks back in my camera roll, a phrase that caught my attention. It talks about Mary, that teenaged girl who responded to the impossible by bursting into song. Mary, it says, "flung herself Godward."

As if God were a direction, or every direction, that we could simply stumble into when we were too tired, too frightened, too overwhelmed for a graceful decent. As if the Holy were waiting for our unsteady feet, ready to catch us with the gentle breath of a lion and the solid warmth of a golden mane.

Flinging ourselves Godward.

As if it were as simple as that. Throwing ourselves towards the Divine with the easy faith of first graders who lean forwards, heavy, into the cradle of our hands, sixth graders who bump past or drop their head onto an arm, seventh graders who kick at feet, freshmen and sophomores who drop a shoulder in a younger, not quite forgotten, way of greeting. Littles and not-so-littles who draw close when they don't know what comes next.

Human enough to know that there is Someone waiting to catch us. Or, at least, human enough to know that we need Someone there.

One of the wonderful things about working with students is that they force me to learn in order to be able to teach. To research answers to questions that they haven't yet asked. To put words to thoughts that rattle around, unarticulated, inside my head. And, to remember.

To remember the power of proximity. To remember that sometimes having the right words isn't as important as they things that we say with our bodies. That sometimes it is worth more to stand elbow jostling close, to steal hats or examine pocket knives or hold out an arm for these dizzying circles that accompany the words to "Happy Day."

To stand outside in the snow so many times that our ears ache with the cold of it. To slip and slide on powdery sidewalks and make snow angels in the parking lot because it hasn't yet fallen enough to stick to the grass.

To light candles and watch movies and crowd into noisy basement circles where the world is a mess and we are a mess, and yet we are flinging ourselves Godward together.

Praying over the top of each other in a tangle of thoughts and voices. Talking about the future and the present and the past. Playing these games on Sunday evenings that are no more than a circle of chairs with more bodies present than our two years ago selves would have dreamed possible.

It certainly isn't polished or perfect. There are dancing through wildflowers moments and slogging through mud ones. Times where everything seems right, and times where we are certain that we are doing everything wrong. Long hours where we wrestle in prayer for these kids, for ourselves. And, longer ones where we lift up our heads, fling ourselves Godward, remember that there is Grace for unsteady feet.

Last year's word was courage. Courage to sit and wait for a youth pastor and courage to do so much more than sit while we waited. Courage for always changing plans and high schoolers who let Haiti adventures burrow deep into their hearts and souls. Courage for doubts and questions and truth. For making space to listen to each other speak.

This year's word is grace.

Grace that is a direction, every direction, waiting for our feeble attempts at humanity to push us, stumbling, into arms that fold over, protect, turn on the lights and send the darkness scattering to corners.

Grace that will surprise us and startle us and leave us frustrated, because, surely, in this situation or that one, Grace is not the answer.

Because, Grace isn't easy.

Every impatient corner of my soul wants to trade in this lavish Grace for Solutions, instead. Don't tell me to love my neighbor. Don't tell me to look closer when I'm already squinting and I can't see the beautiful past the ugly. Don't whisper that there are some questions that don't need to have answers, that the asking is the most important part of the game.

But, do.

Because, I need the reminders.

I need to remember that Grace has been out of hand since the beginning, since "Bereshit bara elohim," since the moment, long before man, when God chose the world, the universe, set it apart, appointed it for this great drama of Incarnation. Grace has been out of hand since Creation.

Stumbling towards Grace, flinging ourselves Godward. Becoming a better story.

"She flings herself Godward," says Elizabeth Johnson about Mary's Magnificat. "Flinging yourself Godward" is faith defined in 3 simple words

— Alethea Allen (@AletheaAllen) December 21, 2015