Spinning Sabbath

Sabbath.

First day back to fall Sunday school, and I am reminded to breathe deep and make each moment count, reminded of how short the time is that we have them here.

It is a specials week. Music. Gym time. Four speakers. Twenty minutes of small group time carved down to ten, and we notebook at the speed of light. They're learning, but I don't think that they realize it yet, these girls who love to draw and cut and glue. They're having fun, and, as they close up their folders, they tell me so.

5th graders now. The smallest group that I've ever had in children's. Six girls this week.

And, yet.

This day of rest spins around me like an overzealous puppy.

Fifth grade. Fourth grade.

Boys. Girls.

They'll settle soon, divide up, begin to sit with their small groups. But, for now. For now, they sit close and play with my lanyard or the ring on my finger. For now, they take half a dozen pictures, not of themselves, but of me. As if I might cease to exist when they stop looking.

I won't, but they don't know that yet.

And, it's okay.

We're setting patterns for the rest of the year. Patterns that they are seen. That they are known. That every moment is precious. Patterns that might just carry us through the tempest that comes as they get just a little bit older.

Because, the middle schoolers are raw today. Antsy. Close. Coming out of a rough week.

Remembering last Sunday's video and quiet tears.

Last week, the boys miscalculated and ended up separated from us in a game. This week, they flop down into tight spaces, this messy muddle of different friend groups who all claim to be mine. 

"Your kids are misbehaving," one of the girls teases me as they jostle and talk and play with my phone when they should be listening to instructions. 

They should be listening.

But, truth comes out in spurts, blurbs that I want to hold on to, go back to. Honest words from the sad eyed one who almost always choses to speak to me with actions instead. Words that I would delve deeper into. If only we had the time.

So, I am listening instead.

Because, these moments are few and precious. These minutes where they pretend to still be a small group.

We split for game, girls on one side, boys on the other. Separated again. And, it does nothing to ease the restless hurt in their souls.

One of my quieter ones connects himself elbow and arm for music, nonstop chatter and fidgeting like the slow release of a pressure valve. He bounces his knee over mine during the lesson and finally spits part of it out as we transition to small groups.

Not all of it, but part.

Enough.

And, I am in the middle of a whirlwind. But, there are patterns.

Patterns that allow them to scramble close at the beginning of the lesson, because, during last week's video, they were too far away. That let them move back to where they were when it becomes clear that this week holds no such surprises.

Patterns that tell stories about soccer games, football, volley ball. But also about boy problems, friend problems, people that they miss, hard things at school.

That make it okay to just be close without needing to talk.

They are raw, and it isn't pretty or smooth, but there is a trust here that has taken long years to build.

Hours in trees and busses and storage rooms. Semi's filled with shoeboxes, kayak rides on a river, and frozen fingers out in the snow. Donut fights and crayon wars. Honest conversations and a thousand holds and catches.

There is a beauty here and also a sweetness. A sweetness in seventh grade boys who offer me m&m's or tuck pieces of gum inside my phone case; in kids who feel no hesitation in referring to me as one of their "best friends;" in girls who lay on their bellies around a piece of paper and allow me to see a glimpse of their hearts; in shouted goodbyes across the parking lot, and in a phone that, almost every week, carries a mark of their presence.

In kids who take pictures of themselves, because they know that I am not going anywhere.

And, even the nomad longing in my soul can find the beauty in this. 

Steadiness. Consistency. Trust.

Sabbath.

A day to rest and to heal.

Loud and raw and spinning.

But, good.

Broken

It's one of the "older" kids who vocalizes it, one of the sophomores who have put in enough hours that they finally feel at home here.

One of the Haiti boys who speaks truth at our tiny evening youth group.

Under twenty kids. Eleven leaders. 

The numbers don't matter. But, they do. In this church of thousands, there is a quiet purpose to the smallness of this thing, a reason that this steady dozen get themselves here week after week after week.  These twenty are no accident.

And, I think that he begins to speak it out.

He talks about brokenness. Not in the way that adults in the Church are using it now, as a buzzword for sin and depravity, but distinctly the way that a high schooler would.

Brokenness: pain, fear, the unknown that whispers a need to cut into flesh, to abuse your own body. Brokenness as a wound needing to be healed, a hurt that can be soothed, a pain the shouldn't be but is, that one day will no longer be.

Brokenness, not as sin, but as a symptom of it.

He talks about the church as a hospital. As a place to come each week to begin to heal.

This is what they understand this place to be.

What it will turn out to be depends on any number of variables, a terrifying ratio of which are in the hands of those of us over the age of twenty. But, for now, this is their hospital.

This is where they trust themselves to limp in each week and find a measure of safety, of security, of sameness and rest.

This is where they expect to do the hard work of helping to heal others and of stepping back and allowing themselves to be healed.

Because, like most high schoolers, they understand themselves to be broken.

They feel the emotions in their souls that refuse to be silent, and they know that they need a place where they can be at peace.

They mean it the same way that every generation of teenagers has meant it, each with their own vocabulary and set of shared understandings. But, they also mean it differently.

Not very differently, but enough.

Because, he means it in the way that they have spent the last year discovering, the way that they found on winter retreat and on summer ministry trips.

Not as a place to hide, but as a place to be changed, a place to become strong enough to change their world. And, if we can find the self control to leave that alone, to walk with them and let their understanding shape what we see and how we explain, I think that it has the power to become, to continue to be, a very powerful thing. 

Wide Eyed. Humble. Curious

The sermon is gentler this week and the kids are quieter, exhausted after a second week of school, drooping in their seats and all too ready to be calm.

Or, as calm as we ever get.

The 1st-3rd graders last less than five minutes on the games that we have been given, so I send them off to find rocks and sticks instead, and they spend quiet moments creating land art, piles and swirls of careful color on the sidewalk.

Twigs snap and they relax in the sunshine, consumed with the act of creating.

Time finishes, and they put the pieces back where they found them without complaint. It didn't need to be permanent. It simply needed to be. To be a mountain or a tower, a tree or a Minecraft figure, a face or a mandala. To be something made, even if only for a moment.

4th and 5th graders join in just as quietly, finishing a quick game of tag, curling themselves under my arms and settling against my side.

They want to know when we start back to small groups, and the answer is two weeks from now. One week of training and then we'll be back into our fall schedule.

I have notebooking planned out for them, things to color and glue and cut and write. We have memory verse sheets, books of the Bible cards, and ways to look at Spiritual gifts. I have a box almost prepped, almost ready to go.

But, for right now, it is enough to simply be consistent, to know their names and their stories, to let them twist the promise ring around and around my finger and drape my arms over their shoulders like a cloak. 

It's not a running week or a manic week, but a tired week to simply be.

The seventh grader who has had a made up a identity on his tag every week for over a year is finally wearing his own name. It was a joke at first, a test to see how long it would take for leaders to really learn who he was. 

As far as he can tell, they haven't. And, he's ready to be known.

They're quiet. Even as balls fly and bodies chase across the room, they're calm.

Younger siblings stick just-close-enough to older ones, and kids who don't always sit with us settle down close. My phone trades hands as they add me on Instagr*m, take goofy pictures, or simply try to stay awake.

We talk and sing, and one of the girls nudges my hand up into the air during One Thing Remains. My sixth grade girls get down on their stomaches, heads together around paper and markers as we use our triangle method to dissect the lesson. 

It's the first time that we've used it since camp, our twisted version of a CBT process, but they love it. And, I love the truth that it draws from their lips.

"If I believe that Jesus died for us," they tell me, "then I will feel spectacular, awestruck, and blown away, and, if I feel that way, then I will be wide eyed, humble, and curious."

Crazy Grace

One of those days, where I am left dizzy by the grace that rushes past us, surrounds us.

The sermon is gentle rebuke, and the kids respond to it viscerally, these 7th graders who have always had their spiritual nerves so raw and close to the surface. They didn't have to hear it to know, to feel that something is going on.

They are noisy and wild and close, filled beyond the capacity of growing minds and souls, letting off steam in bursts of sound and movement. And yet, I am reminded all the more clearly of Grace.

Grace that covers. Grace that soothes hurts that haven't been spoken and pulls us ever tighter under its wing.

Grace for the tears that they shake off before small group. For the holding on to that keeps them grounded, the lifting to their feet or out of the octagon. Grace for mixed up small groups and conversations that cover more ground than ought to be possible.

Grace that is enough when I am not.

Not enough hands to hold on to them all. Not enough ears to listen. Not enough moments to dig into truth. And, not the right gender to follow my boys to small group and hear the things that are bubbling up behind their eyes.

Because, they are heavy with it today. Their own mess spilling out of cups that are too full with what is happening in the sanctuary.

But, there is grace.

Grace for the exhale that follows each deep breath in.

Grace in kids who gather at night and use Haiti as the lens through which they interpret their world.

Grace.

Because, it has been long years since the high school group has felt this safe. Long years since we have had one of these seasons, where they let their guard down and, together, we speak the words that build trust.

It's not perfect. Not without its flaws and its missteps. But, it is new and growing and vulnerably strong.

It is an exhale.

Safety. Trust. Memory. Grace.

Crazy grace that highlights our weaknesses as well as our strengths.

Crazy grace that would sacrifice everything to set us free.

And, it is ours.