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."