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.