Anniversary Showing

Two years ago we were rolling out plastic flooring in a church gym for the first showing of SOLD, not sure if it would ever go any farther or even if people would show up.

Today we can pull into the local community college with almost a dozen seasoned volunteers on our "travel team" list, people who can come together to lead this thing in any city where we could think to send them.

We can laugh at the quirks of it all, the memories of where that green bubble wrap came from or why we do it this way now instead of that way. Go slow and deliberate and still set it up or tear it down in two and a half hours instead of the once upon a three or four. Tease each other and laugh about the days when we used to walk on egg shells, uncertain of what we were getting ourselves into.

And, it's good.

Good to be able to step back far enough to see which site volunteers can take on more responsibility. Good to be able to hand them a procedure notebook and a pile of bins and set them loose on the decorating. Because, yes, we have procedure notebooks now. Careful lists and pictures to document every step of the process.

Good to stand around in the trailer and talk about the future that is coming faster than any of us could have ever anticipated.

An East Coast/ Mid West college tour with the Live Love Movement that will take us farther than we we've ever been before. A month of sending teams back and forth across the country to set this thing up and tear it down as many times as we can get away with.

A partnership with Hope Outfitters and their brand new t-shirt design for the months of May and June.

A constant stream of emails and cost estimates and purchase orders.

Because, it's not just my baby anymore. Not just a random collection of sketches in the back of a notebook. Not just an innocent question to my dad of, "Can we build this? Will it stand up?"

And, it seems so strange to think of the post-Haiti conversations that led us here. The quiet moments on a back porch with the youth pastor's wife, sipping from glasses of kombucha while she processed through a response to the things that we had seen and heard. The offhand challenge just before a meeting with the outreach pastor of, "We should see if there is some kind of an anti-trafficking exhibit we could bring in."

The long internet searches and the impossibly small budget that we set to build one ourselves. Piles of lumber in a borrowed barn and friends and family huddled around to examine donated blueprints in the biting cold.

The moving walls and moving walls and moving walls again. Countless volunteer hours and vacation days. Until somehow we have gotten here. Here where it isn't mine anymore and hasn't been for a long time. Here where this thing has taken on a life of its own.

Challenge, Comfort, and Trying Again

Third time's the charm for my seventh graders.

Third week of trying to get back into the storage room. Third week of trying to sit together in this loose clump of familiar bodies.

They cluster together even before I sit down, and it feels like I might have done something right back in their 4th and 5th grade years, when getting to know each other was first priority of every giant small group. Scatter for a game and then form back up.

Whisper questions and comments and stray thoughts as the eighth grade leaders farewell a class of kids. Sit with toilet paper rolls over their ears and my phone in their hands. Play with rubber bracelets that have the church focus inscribed in bold, red lettering.

LOVE: as I have loved you

And, this is love. Not that we loved Him, but that He first loved us.

Loved us when we were a mess. Taught us to heal and comfort and challenge. To sit in both the presence of our own brokenness and His glory. To love small and to love extravagantly. To live in the tension of the Kingdom.

"I get down." The lyrics to the song burst from 4th and 5th grade lips around me, light in their eyes as we squat to the ground like frogs, just waiting to spring up as high as we possibly can, to take flight for just a millisecond. "He lifts me up. I get down. He lifts me up."

They burst in the doors this morning with a cry of, "Jessica!" Only four of them, but five for now, because we've picked up a little 4th grade tag along.

"Can I sit with you?" He eyes the name tags that the girls have stuck to the front of my shirt, the flip flops that have come off my feet, the name badge that they pass between each other, and the yellow lightsaber that dangles from it. A rainbow loom creation that one of the girls presented me with this morning.

"Sure." I nod and we make space for a squirmy boy in amongst my squirmy girls. This kiddo who sits on my flip flops like a wiggle disk and presses his own name tag onto my knee as we both sit cross legged in this tight little mass of humanity.

We break out to our space under the stairs to talk about 1st and 2nd Peter and watch goofy YouT*be videos. Pass out Bible study pages and silver star stickers. Color and draw and just generally enjoy one another as we talk about next year and the transitions that are coming.

Switch over into second hour and the middle schoolers who are ready to try again.

"Can you take us? Just for five minutes?"

He pops into a lull in conversation, already poised to take off, as if I couldn't help but answer him yes. Yes, I'll go with you. Yes, you can have five minutes of my time. Yes, you still have the right to ask. Yes, I see you. Yes, you matter.

"Yes." I glance at the clock and take off after his lengthening legs, marveling a little at this growing up that he has done, these new words and new actions. No longer quite the little boy who used to come in with wild eyed looks and dance through chaos until I wrapped my arms around him and held on tight. Steady in the trust that there is always next week, always another chance.

We go up and come back, and he almost walks past me when it is time to sit for the lesson. Almost, but not quite.

Instead, I reach out a hand to grab his foot as he walks past, this growing one who still speaks in the bumps and collisions of middle school boys, and he nudges my arm in response, trying to jump back before I can tag him. Trying, but not too hard. Because this dozen times back and forth is talking. Because the words not spoken could fill a book. Because this is invitation given and accepted, and he settles into the clump of bodies without appearing to give it a second thought.

"Yahweh, Yahweh," voices echo across the polished concrete floors at the end of the hour, "we love to shout your name, oh Lord!" and M*dd** laughs when I mention that the song always makes me think of one of the missing boys, smiling as she nods and gestures to the place in front of me, as if she can picture my hands settling on his shoulders as he throws back his head and yells.

Because, three weeks missing is made smaller against four years of presence. And, this might just be the smallness and the consistency of extravagant, Jesus style love.

For these hours, on this day, in this place, this is a tiny part of what it means to be the Church. A Church that shows up and messes up and come back to try again. A Church that trusts that, in Him, we have the power to do this right.

Log Removal

We jog through the nearly empty sanctuary between services, and an older gentleman I've never met stops them just in front of me with a chiding glance.
"This is a church. Be respectful."

Walk. He means. Don't run. Don't jog. Don't disturb the peace.

And, I bite back the theological snark that wants to spring to my lips.

'No, sir.' I want to pull the boys beside me and quietly explain. 'This is a building. These are the church. You are the church.'

'Seven days a week, the church that is in these boys runs and jumps and shouts, the way that you did when you were ten and thirteen. These are the church. Honor them the way that they are trying too honor you.'

Because, I know these boys. See them differently than a stranger ever would. I know the speed that they could be moving and the screams that could be coming from their throats. I hear their silence and see the smooth jog through empty spaces where there is no one to be disturbed. And, I see the way that they are making decisions right now. Decisions about you and the Jesus that you represent.

Because, I am hoping and praying that, even as we slow to a walk, they understand.

Understand that these halls are theirs as much as they are yours. That they have a place here and a right to be seen. A right to be honored just as they have a right to honor.

Hoping for an understanding and a response that is beyond their years.

That they will be humble and responsive, and all of the things that children are meant to be to adults, but that their hearts will whisper truth despite it. That they have seen church done, been a part of community enough times, to know what to do.

Hoping that I will know what to do.

"But wisdom that comes from above is first of all peaceable, gentle, willing to yield."

One of the verses that I sent home with my fifth graders echoes through my head as we slip through a shortcut, grab what we came for, and head back.

And, I can't judge him too much, this gentleman who probably came to church this morning planning to love Jesus Style but didn't quite get it right.

Didn't get it quite right, like my boys who walk halfway through the sanctuary on the way back and then burst into a jog that is part respect for my time and part defiant snark.

Like me, when the boys leave something out of place, and, rather than pick it up for them or with them, I call them out and back up the request with a threat that I never intend to keep. Or, when one of them complies, and I respond to the other with biting sarcasm.

Because, there is this log in my own eye that I need to clear before I can begin to complain about the speck in his. This lie that says that I can will them into acting "right." Bully them into being less afraid. Shame them into living like they know they are loved.

"If you can't be responsible," my words press down on all of the vulnerable spots of this kid who is only trying to use me as a safety net, "then we won't be able to do this again."

And, it sounds like a natural consequence, but it isn't. I'm not retracting a privilege. I'm retracting my presence.

Doing this so not like Jesus that it is nonsense. Absolute nonsense.

They are thirteen. Not thirty. Learning. Not perfect. Messy. Anxious. Swamped in the uncertainty of middle school. Fighting to trust.

We're here because something feels off kilter in their worlds. Because, since they were tiny little kindergarteners, we have operated under the assumption that their behaviors meant something. That they didn't just wake up this morning with a devious plan to drag me along as they gave a random stranger conniption fits.

We're here because they woke up this morning needing five extra minutes of my time.

Here because I needed Light to shine into my own soul and expose the dark, messy spaces. Needed to walk down these quiet steps, reach into my own eye, and yank.

 "The eye is the lamp of the body. You draw light into your body through your eyes, and light shines out to the world through your eyes. So if your eye is well and shows you what is true, then your whole body will be filled with light."
Matthew 6:22

Second Chances and Precious Time

It's gorgeous outside this morning, and we do our best to take advantage of it. Bright orange yarn that we pass back and forth between us, each criss cross another recitation of the verse, until the web is strong enough to support a Bible. Three of them, actually.

Build pyramids and run slalom through long rows of trees. Laugh and encourage and pull faces for the camera.

Tuck back into our space under the stairs and talk about Hebrews and James. Practice going through the Bible study sheets, and watch their faces light up at the idea that the book of Hebrews could have been "written by a girl."

For the first time all year, they annotate the front of our books of the Bible posters, making their careful note in silver pen.

Fifth grade has never been a time when I present theories or go into the complications of Biblical cannon, but this is important to them. Important for my little Ravenclaw girls to know that someone who shared their anatomy may have done more than starred in a rare Old Testament story or been a part of the New Testament church. Someone like them may have taught, may have led (did teach, did lead), may have known things, may have written things down.

May have shaped the Church, and, through that, may have shaped history.

The knowledge sends lightening through their bodies, and I can see them, just for this moment, taking a new ownership of this thing that we call Scripture.

"Hey," M*t** greets me with a gentle foot between my shoulder blades while I am still sitting circled up with the girls and then dances out of reach, "do you have gum?"

Today is a do over, a reset, a once again chance to prove that we understand one another.

"Yes." The cluster of smaller hands that follow his feel like proof that we are doing something right: the remainder of my girls; a ten year old, his face bright with star stickers from my box, who is the fourth sibling in his family to know me as a leader and whose sister leads this same small group second hour; the oldest son of a man who probably taught one of the first lessons on missions that I ever heard.

These stories that twist back around each other, criss crossed and overlapped like the string that we played with earlier, until they are strong enough to hold us up. Strong enough to bear the weight of all our mess and triumph.

He is light and goofy and close, and I know without asking that we will be going to the storage room today. That we'll be making good on last week's promise.

There are other conversations in between. 6th graders. 7th graders. 8th graders. 9th graders. This mix of boys and girls. High schoolers and middle schoolers. Adults and kids. Leaders' meetings that fluctuate wildly between the serious and the absurd.

"Can you take us now?" He slips into a quiet moment between a sixth grade new/old arrival and seventh grade conversations, and we go. One barefoot. One stocking footed. One still in shoes. Through the building that we know like the familiarity of our own homes.

Go to cover old stories and make new memories.

Skid back into the Gallery just as the leaders are being called up to the stage for breakout groups where he slips off to join a clump of his friends and I am swarmed by half a dozen sixth and seventh grade girls while we talk about the "one anothers."

Play a game, take some selfies on my phone, and head for home.

Made it to the storage room. Didn't quite make it to sitting together. And, I'm sure that he's already plotting for next week and another chance to try again.

I don't have much to offer them in the physical. A stick of gum. A promise that their selfies will end up on Inst*gram before the end of the day. A solid body to act as an anchor for these few minutes on Sunday morning.

But, we can create memories. Memories like the donut fight that still brings a smile to the face of the eighth grader who comes in between services to pick up his fifth grade little sister. Ridiculous moments that, even three years later, still make them feel "claimed." Make them feel like a few short weeks were long enough to belong.

For this hour and a half, I can give them my time. Time that might make it a little easier to believe me when I talk about this Jesus and a massive Love that wants to sweep us away.

May the 4th Be With You

It's May the 4th,  and we do Star Wars all day just because we can. Because the sun is out in fits and starts. Because summer is almost here but not quite, and the kids aren't really sure if they want to speed up the clock or slow it down. Because there are lightsabers, and why would we not?

My fifth graders are a squiggling mass of energy that bursts in the doors to tackle me with hugs and words and noise and wild energy. The cut outs on their notebooking pages are all jagged edges and hasty streaks of glue, a crooked pile of papers that I'll sort out another day - some time when there aren't children to hold on to.

When my hands don't need to be constantly busy, landing on shoulders, curling over fingers that want to poke their friends, gesturing to turn front or keep their eyes on the speaker. When this one isn't leaned against my knee and that one isn't drawing a flower onto my skin. When I'm not sliding one across the floor so that he's sitting with our group or looking at the half dozen things that they have found in their Bibles.

When my lips don't need to whisper quiet explanations during story or murmur "later" when they ask for stickers or gum or whether or not we're going to play a game.

Because, these kids are more important than the papers will ever be. These ones who slip into our spot under the stairs to talk about two new-to-us books of the Bible and try to beat my score at Flappy Bird. Who want to know "where we're going today." Who are almost in sixth grade but not quite.

Today. Today we're going out to the grass with a bag full of lightsabers, K*d*n hopping along on one foot as he tries to preserve his good socks while still finishing the decorations on the bottom of his shoe. Today, K*yl* will scrape her foot on the sidewalk but jump back into the game anyways. J*yd*h will prove herself fierce with a lightsaber, and they will have a giant battle until they are breathless.

Five lightsabers and seven kids means that they drop their weapon anytime that they are hit and read me off the memory verse before they are allowed back into the rotation. "A new command I give you," H**l*y and H*yl** race each other to finish first, to get to the blue and silver plastic that was just thrown onto the grass, "love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." 

*n*k*'s voice layers over theirs as they finish, and, when we finally go inside, K*r*ss* beelines for the memory booth, suddenly confident enough to recite.

"By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

"LOVE:" the band from middle school is wide and obvious around my wrist, red letters dark against the gray, "As I Have Loved You," and I have to wonder at the half way sassy response from one of the kids, "But, I like being alive."

If Jesus loved us enough to die for us, the simple logic turns behind their eyes, then does #JesusStyle love mean dying too? Or does it mean this? Does it mean carefully placing stars on a waiting forehead, blue, gold, and green bright above sparkling fourth grade eyes? Or, passing out the gum that one of my seventh graders has taught them to ask for?

"Will you take me and D*n**l to the storage room today?" He steps into place beside me, this thirteen year old man/boy who carries around a piece of my heart with the same easy confidence of so many of my kids.

He knows that I'll say yes. Just as clearly as he knows that he could get there without me. Because we both know that he's done it on his own a dozen dozens of times. That the question and the answer aren't about a place but about a state of being. About a chance to simply be.

And, here is where the narrative falls apart a little, where we're still trying to sort out this ever changing dance that is middle school: D*n**l doesn't come this week. The trip doesn't happen. Instead, we talk a little in the precious quiet before a leaders' meeting, and then, he glues himself to one of the high school guys, always just within eye sight as they roll on the floor like puppies - if puppies were to put each other in head locks.

He loves it, loves being roughhoused with and held onto, but I can also watch him, see him still trapped inside his own head. This is good, but it isn't quite what he thought he wanted, so we sort of muddle our way through making the pieces fit. Dance a little bit off beat, off step, and syncopated, the way that the boys like to clap on the in between of the rhythm during music.

Lightsabers and spagetti noodles in the grass. Selfies on my phone and kiddos who are tucked in so tight that we're nearly sitting on the same piece of floor.

My hands are busy again, flicking shoulders and curling over fingers that want to poke at their friends, tapping my temples and pointing forwards in a years old reminder to focus on the music. There are lightsaber battles after Sunday school and whispered explanations during the lesson. Conversations and laughter and never enough time. Slowly growing up, but still a thousand times my kids. 

It might be messy, rough around the edges and held together with jagged streaks of glue, but this is how we love. This is how we try to prove that grace is enough.

This is #JesusStyle.

When It's All in the Details

Sometimes, my heart needs reminders too. Reminders that the awesome things that we set up for our kids are nothing if we don't spend time with them in the midst of it. That we're still learning and growing, clumsy at this, awkward. Teaching and modeling and discipling on the run. Bouncing against each others' lives like so many rocks in a polisher.

7:11 comes, and I spend hours watching them bounce into and off of each other in an inflatable boxing ring. Really watching them. Watching to know when to count down from ten when they start to get exhausted. Watching to make sure that they keep each other on their feet.

But, also watching when they pair off carefully. When kids who are bigger or stronger or faster hold off a little to give the smaller ones an upper hand. When they brag on each other and encourage each other and laugh together about things that were done. When they pay attention to the tiny details of moments and force my scattered brain to pay attention to them too.

Details that whisper that they're getting older. Still little. Mature. Growing. But, mostly, details that whisper about the trust that we have built into this thing.

"They're your kids," K*r*n shrugs as I reach in and snag a stubborn boy by the ankle, pulling him half out of the inflatable until he agrees to wear the foam helmet, "you don't want them to get hurt."

It's said casually, carefully, and the layers of truth to it catch my heart in my chest.

My kids.

I've called them that for years, at least as many years as they have called me their leader. But, somewhere only recently, they have picked it up as a form of self reference.

"Your kids are…" "Your kid…" "Control your kids!"

My kids. Running wild through the building. Playing hide and seek in all the places where they are not supposed to be. Helping me to hunt each other down and shrugging gracefully into new boundaries. Coming to me when they are hurt or in trouble or bored or confused.

Walking on the tops of chairs. Playing deaf to guest leaders who try to stop them. Glaring at me when I send them to apologize and digging in their emotional heels. But, doing it anyways, because these are our kids, which makes them stubborn as rocks, but responsible to their very cores.

Responsible enough to apologize to a stranger. Responsible enough that I find a pair of best friends split up for the rest of the night. Separating from each other rather than being seen as an item when they are not.

So much more grown up than they used to be and yet still so much younger than they feel.

"You don't want them to get hurt."

 Physically, I 'll keep them safe, sure. Watch for the moment just before the boxing ring stops being fun. Insist that they wear the helmet. Hold ear rings and glasses and hats and phones until my hands are overflowing. Offer bandaids and examine bruises. Let them test their bodies and find their limits.

J*n*h (LJ) and C*lt*n ask if I'll leave them in the boxing ring for "a long time," past the exhaustion point where I normally pull them out. And, then, they aren't quite sure what to do with themselves with the protective limit removed, J*n*h finally flopping down and glancing at me with a look that suggests I just kicked a puppy. "Aren't you going to do that thing where you count down?"

There is a trust here. Trust that, while they're still learning their growing bodies, I will stop them before they go to far.

But, there is also J*n*h D, the blond head that you can just see in the backgrounds of some of the Faceb**k photos, leaned up against the bounce house beside me, talking. Reporting in on each of my kids. Where they are. Who they're with. Whenever there might be a situation that requires an extra set of eyes.

Not to be a narc, but because it is in their natures to look out for one another. To protect each other. Even when it means protecting each other from each other.

"So and so is being mean to me again," one of the girls comes up to complain, and his eyes flash fire.

"Like at camp?" He fixes me with a look that insists that I go and fix it. Fix it now, before someone gets hurt. Not because he can't or he won't, but because these are my kids, and, so much like my kiddos at school, they assume that keeping them safe is written into my DNA.

Assume that, as they are navigating these floods of hormones and this growing understanding, I will stop them before they go to far. Assume that I (we) don't want them to get hurt.

The intricate N*rf gun courses and the hours that we spent taping and stapling and preparing for their arrival mean nothing unless we care for them at least as gently as they care for one another.

So we do, or we try to. And, I'm never quite sure that we get it all right. That with this many kids running around it is even possible to get it all right for five minutes, let alone four hours. But, so long as these are our kids, we are certainly going to try.

Eternity in the Middle

Sunday evening. Intersect.

Spring break and lingering sunshine draw the kids outside like a magnet, where they make up games with a frisbee and a foam ball; chase each other in circles up and down hills, around the outside of this little building across the parking lot from where they served this morning.

These are our Sunday school teachers. Our middle school leaders. Our Student Owners.

Willing hands move chairs and football tables and TV stands. Meet early to plan things that they haven't told us about yet. And, it might be almost cheating how easy this is, how simply they fall into these patterns and this community.

Beyond us; despite us; alongside us.

Working together to find eternity in the middle.

The youth pastor comes panting up the stairs to where we stand greeting the few who trickle in on this quiet Sunday, the entrance a passthrough, rather than the sticking point that it is when winter reigns. He is smiling, exaggerated, a thousand times removed from his moments earlier frustration of setting up sound and slides.

"The game already started! It just happened! Let's go play!"

Play link tag in this softness just before the sunset. Come inside to kids who MC and lead music in this echoing space that they have filled with light. Who laugh often and easily.

Listen to a lesson in this careful arc that they have set up. Because, no one minds the switch to chairs so long as they can see each other. So long as they're not doing this thing alone.

Team building activity by small group. Split, as always, by the months we were born.

Smiles that dance across faces, light eyes, as they enjoy these things, these moments that they have created.

A game played simply because they felt like it. Spontaneous clapping in a church that often can't hold a rhythm to save its life. Bodies curled cross legged on the floor to sing By Your Side, as a tangible reminder of our smallness and the bigness that holds us. Voices that sound a dozen times stronger than nineteen students and four leaders.

Collectively certain that this is right and this is good.

Silly commercials instead of breakout questions. Nonsense and holiness wrapped into one as we practice a little of the easy presence of grace.

Because, tonight, with these kids, we can.

We can step back and breathe and enjoy these people. Enjoy the smallness of this group.

Find Christ here.

Not because they are perfect - and certainly not because we are. It's spring and it's Lent and we're gearing up for Haiti and there are a dozen tensions in their eyes that we don't begin to name.

They are tired and ready for a break.

But, they are present. They are here, and they are pouring themselves into this.

They come, and they create space.

Create community.

Breathe grace.

And, it's dark when we leave, when they scatter to homes and coffee shops and wherever they go when they are not here. Still warm, with a wind that promises to bring in blue skies for tomorrow.

An hour and a half.

1.5 out of the 168 before we gather together like this again.

But, maybe, just maybe, we managed to find eternity in the middle. And, maybe, as we go out to be the church, rather than just be at it; maybe we'll find it again.

Lenten Musings

"Do you guys celebrate Lent?"

A new sixth grader asks the question as we sit down on the cool concrete of the floor, the youth pastor just ready to begin his talk.

Yes. No. Sort of. Not really.

We're not a liturgical church, and the days on the calendar mean little beyond the occasional need to set up more chairs, or the vague chance of dresses and ties. But, we do this time of year. 

Lent. Spring.

This something that eats at their bones and stirs in their souls until it begins to feel like we've been here, done this before.

Growing, learning, settling into the cusp of summer and the changes that it brings.

Talking about Haiti over the heads of little people about to begin music or while cutting plastic and denim to be turned into shoes. Pulling cardboard from the recycling bin and scrawling over it with the week's verse - word by word copying out truth.

Normalizing the transition to middle school and running, running, running when the crazy-makers don't have it in their bodies to stay still.

Mixing moments and eye rolls and smiles and exasperation.

"With us and responsible." "With us and responsible." 

"Responsible." "Responsible." "Responsible." Until the kids are saying it too. Leaning a little closer. Fidgeting a little more. Growing like weeds and not sure what to do with themselves.

Because, we're spinning our wheels in this mud, slowly making traction, stick by careful stick. And, I have to remind myself to breathe a little deeper. Slow down. Don't rush the end of the story. Remember.

Remember that we've done this before. This bit where they glue themselves to my elbows and my knees. Where M*t** reappears from his spot at the front and starts to sit near us again. Where they slip in and out of my space, just wanting to say something. Show a magic trick. Take a picture. Offer a cookie. Be seen.

Remember that this is Lent.

This, with my phone in the pocket of a sixth grade girl, while some of the seventh grade boys pass around the badge part of my name tag, the lanyard around someone else's neck. The clapping hand shakes with Ch*d that wouldn't happen any other time of year. And, the slightly discombobulated feel that we ought to be moving faster than we are.

Like we were hurtling forwards and someone hit the breaks.

Stop. Breathe. 

Look back on old behaviors and new growth.

See how far they've come.

Watch the hands slip into the air in worship. Stay with this one who still can't stand the intensity of feeling that it brings to the room. Let him be uncomfortable. Let him grow.

Let them count the number of camps that they have left. The number that they have already seen.

Let them slip away, back into a room that they haven't been in for months. Let them fall into habits that only come back when it feels like their world is not quite right. Let them scramble a little in this mud. Together.

Together, even when I don't quite catch the cues. When the boys circle up for the game and then send an envoy in confusion, because, where am I? Why do I already have this circle that has formed around me? Didn't I know to come find them?

When we release the girls too early or let them get too loud. When the kids aren't the only ones spinning their wheels, fighting for traction.

When we celebrate Lent because we need to remember.

Remember that a King is coming. A sacrifice. To do what we could never do for ourselves.

Remember that today is never the end of the story.

Remember

It's the only clear photo that I have of today. This one that a fifth grader took. Tired eyes. Pulling a face at her as soon as she pointed the phone in my direction. Things scattered everywhere, as if a tornado has struck in our "girl cave" under the stairs. Pants too short over my ankles.

One girl, maybe two still hurriedly drawing out today's books of the Bible. No one in frame doing anything particularly churchy.

And, yet.

K*r*ss* is behind me, carefully winding up a top that first came from Honduras. K*d*n is belly down, flipping through pictures of twelve-year-old me in Nicaragua. Laughing. Sorting them into two piles. Photos that I am in, and photos that I am not.

Because, this is how we do church.

This is how we do church when it's daylight savings time. When they don't have a worship leader. And, when the story presenters are different than normal.

My girls jump up front with me to help the 4th and 5th grade director lead ad hoc music while we wait for the videos to load. Jesus Loves Me and Amazing Grace and Father Abraham. Words but no music while fifty little voices belt out Like a Lion.

"Let love explode and bring the dead to life

A love so bold

To see a revolution somehow"

As if, on this day of celebration, with its balloons and cookies and brightly printed banners, we are being quietly reminded of the messiness of this thing that we are doing. The rawness of humanity pressing up against the Divine.

The squirrely one slips her hand into mine as we sing. Presses down on my shoulders while we pray. Hears a dozen reprimands and jumps on just as many chances to serve.

They whisper during story and try to remember where on earth Hebrews is hiding in their Bibles. We draw and look and pictures, and we run, skip, spin, and army crawl with a well worn set of relay cards. They play Fl*ppy Bird and mancala on my phone.

Too loud in the hallway. Climbing the outside of the stairwell. Boy in this girls' group because he knows us better. Messy in every way.

Holy.

Holy when their voices ring out. 

Holy when K*d*n mentions their girl cave and when K*yl* asks if we're going "upstairs."

Holy when we build into them with these tactile sensations that their bodies are going to remember long after their minds have forgotten the specifics of todays lesson.

Holy when my seventh graders are back in another season of "remember."

"Remember when you used to bring us donuts?"

"Remember how you used to chase me?"

"Remember when I was a baby?"

"Remember when…?"

Remember.

Remind me. Remind me that Jesus makes me enough. Remind me of the sanctity of this place where we come to love God and love each other. Remind me that nothing else matters.

So we remind and we remember. I chase this one and catch him and chase him again. Lead this group out to the foyer to get cookies. Put the balloons back when that one can't quite figure out how too fix what he undid.

Hand out gum. Let them look at pictures.

Play a game and roll my eyes at a dozen antics. Shake my head when they need to stop. And, laugh often. (The middle schoolers are convinced that I'm always happy and I always laugh.)

Lend out my name tag and let them store their stuff in my bag.

Sit in breakout groups where we talk about authority and their favorite kind of ice cream. Let them push me into a garbage can as payback for the game. Run up stairs and around corners and wear half a dozen different names as we try to squeeze everything that we can out of these brief moments, feeling the quiet press of time.

Never enough hands or lips or ears or moments to communicate the bigness of this God. Never enough chances to whisper truth or shout it across this room that is throbbing with life and hurt and mess and beauty.

And, yet, somehow, more than what we need.

Not, because of us, but because of Him. Because of Grace that is sufficient. Because of Strength that is made perfect in weakness.

Because of this God. This Holy that shows up in voices of thirty-three high schoolers and a handful of leaders as they sing in the basement of a building that is probably older than any of the kids. That shows up even when the youth pastor is gone for the week. Even when we're still trying to figure out which clocks are wrong and which ones are right.

That sends six pizzas in the front door just as we are trying to determine if we have any snacks for the kids. Not because they need it. No one here is starving. But, because, sometimes I think that He likes to remind us how much He works outside of our plans.

How He shows up in the loose and the messy and the not quite finished around the edges.

How things don't have to look "right" in order to be holy.

Because, my seventh graders aren't the only ones who need to remember.

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.