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Sunday.
When I can't decide if I should be letting go or holding on a little tighter.
When smiles are more important than almost anything else, not because there is so much stock put into being happy, but because every grin is a deep chance for connection, an excuse for eye contact and proof that they are loved.
When I do my best to look confident, even when it isn't true.
When I do my best to look confident, even when it isn't true.
And, when I don't know that I am doing it right at all.
Because, sometimes, on Sunday, I let fear whisper back at me. Whisper that I am too much. Not enough. Wrong.
That this isn't how it goes. Isn't how it's done.
But, I look in their eyes that have never known anything else, and I wonder what it would mean for them if we suddenly started doing it "right."
Would they learn to behave? Would they settle down? Or, would they disappear? Quit coming?
Monday comes.
And I am reminded in a dozen ways that it is sometimes okay to do it wrong.
Reminded by an eleventh grade boy who stretches tall above my head these days but still laughs over the days when I was his third grade Sunday school teacher. Endless relay races and failed kangaroo kicks. Too much noise and not enough sitting still. Once quiet relationships that still stand.
Although, these days, he is far from quiet!
Reminded by a teacher in the behavioral room who murmurs how much smoother things ran today with my unexpected drop in.
By kindergarten boys who smile and grin and show me every stroke that they make with their pencils.
By fifth graders who run up to tell me the details of their new Indiana Jones hat and the imagined adventures that it took to get it.
By a youth pastor who gives us the four keys of a successful youth ministry:
1) Relationship
2) Relationship
3) Relationship
4) Relationship
By the faces that look up from a photo directory.
We do the things that will most help this particular group of kids to see Jesus in us. We look for the good, and we call it out. Even when good isn't "right."
It's almost the the holidays. Almost Advent. And, they can feel the end of normal time pressing down on them like a blanket.
Warm and comforting to some.
Wet and smothering to others.
So, we'll take advantage of this this space before the next colored block on the liturgical calendar, this last breath before the holidays scatter them to the winds.
This week's fourteen of them sit clustered around, turned all sideways and catty whompus, tucked in amongst feet and knees that seem to be going every direction at once, but somehow still mostly facing front.
They listen and type answers to the question that I ask when their attention starts to waver.
Their answers are simple but very much not so simple, right at this age where they are trying to figure out life and death and everything in between.
There's no magic in this. Not of the Hogwarts variety, at least. Sometimes, not even a lot of confidence. Nothing that I can whisper to make it easy or smooth or painless. But, there is Jesus. And, that is enough.
And I am reminded in a dozen ways that it is sometimes okay to do it wrong.
Reminded by an eleventh grade boy who stretches tall above my head these days but still laughs over the days when I was his third grade Sunday school teacher. Endless relay races and failed kangaroo kicks. Too much noise and not enough sitting still. Once quiet relationships that still stand.
Although, these days, he is far from quiet!
Reminded by a teacher in the behavioral room who murmurs how much smoother things ran today with my unexpected drop in.
By kindergarten boys who smile and grin and show me every stroke that they make with their pencils.
By fifth graders who run up to tell me the details of their new Indiana Jones hat and the imagined adventures that it took to get it.
By a youth pastor who gives us the four keys of a successful youth ministry:
1) Relationship
2) Relationship
3) Relationship
4) Relationship
By the faces that look up from a photo directory.
We do the things that will most help this particular group of kids to see Jesus in us. We look for the good, and we call it out. Even when good isn't "right."
It's almost the the holidays. Almost Advent. And, they can feel the end of normal time pressing down on them like a blanket.
Warm and comforting to some.
Wet and smothering to others.
So, we'll take advantage of this this space before the next colored block on the liturgical calendar, this last breath before the holidays scatter them to the winds.
This week's fourteen of them sit clustered around, turned all sideways and catty whompus, tucked in amongst feet and knees that seem to be going every direction at once, but somehow still mostly facing front.
They listen and type answers to the question that I ask when their attention starts to waver.
There's no magic in this. Not of the Hogwarts variety, at least. Sometimes, not even a lot of confidence. Nothing that I can whisper to make it easy or smooth or painless. But, there is Jesus. And, that is enough.
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