Snow Blast 2015

Middle school camp comes the weekend after, four of us repacking into bags that still carry marks from high school retreat. But, the kids are ready to go all in. So, all in is how we go.

They help us with name tags and luggage and anything that they can think of to stay close and avoid waiting on the bus. The boys save me a seat just as they have for so many camps before this. I am quietly reprimanded for not being at church last weekend and loudly reminded of the Grace that covers - that these growing ones found the words that so often elude us. That, thirty minutes in, forgiveness has already been asked and offered.

And, then, we do whatever it is that you do on middle school bus rides. We talk. Play cards. Heads up. Mad Libs. Listen to music. Walk and stand and officially prove our bus driver the most patient person on earth. Devolve into slapping games until the backs of hands are red skinned and stinging. Watch as the kids slowly become confident that they can do this without ear buds or movies.

Pull into camp and hear them declare, "This is our camp." "[Summer camp] was just a break, but now we're back."

This muddy, slushy, rainy place. This is their camp.

Even when the music is not at all what they were expecting or we mark our first cabin time with not-the-kind-of-tears-that-you-hope-for-at-camp, they are happy to be here. So, we spend another weekend spoiling our kids.

Mini marshmallows roasted over tea lights. Basketball games with made up rules that somehow allow for dog piles of 7th and 8th grade boys. Time and space to just relax, to be young, to trust that their leaders have their backs.

That we'll spend our early mornings plotting and planning and moving pieces of stage and furniture so that they have a place to come up front during music, and an angle to see the screen. That we'll block off entire sections of chairs so that they have a place to sit before they've even thought about crawling out of a warm sleeping bag. That our instinct is defense rather than reprimand. That we'll warn them ahead of time of the things that might throw them off and call out the good whenever we happen to see it. Because, we see so much good in these kids.

They've grown up so much, these 8th grade girls who quote back to me the things that I told their 6th grade selves, who find a Saturday night space to ask questions and listen to me answer in my raspy voice. Still young enough to let us explain the world, but old enough that I can watch the gears turning in their heads as they weigh our words and the testimony of our lives.

They're brave and quirky, and they know that we think they are marvelous because of it. But, we spend the time to go back over what they are, to talk about what's coming, to give them tools and hope and salve for these anxious hearts.

Our 8th graders fight with fear, and it makes them brave.

Our 7th graders fight inadequacy, and it makes them strong.

Our 6th graders fight ignorance, and it makes them wise.

Brave enough to pull close to leaders and let us help to sort out the messy and the beautiful. Strong enough to laugh and mourn and create safety like a bubble around them. Wise enough to watch and learn, to mimic the Christ-likeness that they see, encourage it by their careful attention.

Yes, we see good in these kids.

In the midst of the ups and downs, we see kids who are allowing the Spirit of God to shape and mold and change them. And, I love it. I love that I have spent five years watching these 8th graders learn to trust. Trust God. Trust us. Trust each other. Five year watching them learn to recognize peace.

I don't have to carefully introduce the boys to their counselors anymore. Don't have to give those constant reassurances that, yes, this man is safe, and, yes, that one is too. They roughhouse with their leaders without stopping to read my reaction at every catch. And, I am slowly learning the art of being available anyways.

The one who has always been so sensitive to worship music no longer surges with discomfort when hands in the room begin to raise. They stay up until 4:00 in the morning talking about anything and everything. Or, some of them do, even while mine fall into an early sleep, exhausted with this business of growing up and learning Love.

The girls shrug when they don't have an answer or tell us they don't know, rather than fighting us off with nonsense statements or desperately grasped at distractions. They pull each other into doing things. Separate for long hours and then come back with a confident ease, no longer the littles who told us every time that they were going to use the bathroom - in our cabin.

Instead, for this short weekend, at least, they simply are. In the midst of the missteps and the new counts of getting older, they prove themselves valiantly up for the task. Things that would have thrown them for hours take minutes, and I watch, again and again, as they rely on the strengths of their classmates, the strengths of the classes that surround them, to fill in the places where they are uncertain.

Because, growing up so often means growing into the idea of interdependent community. (And, learning to give grace for adults who are still trying to learn what it looks like to do community.)

Together. Washed in Grace.

When we've barely gotten started and my name tag is already around a 7th grade neck.

When I make a comment about having "lost my children," and 7th and 8th grader of the not-in-my-cabin variety both look at me with a mostly mocking, "Umm. We're right here."

Be careful with your tongue. They are paying attention. They remember.

Kid from school who follows like a shadow during free time.

The ones who come to stand close during music, this one still, those ones squirming, that one watching carefully. Always watching. Slowly putting words to the way that we do this thing.

Dodge ball games that drive the staff camp nuts with their constant questions and burning drive to prove themselves. Not winning. Disappointed. But, better able to handle it than last year.

Girls jumping in to help the boys in dodge ball. Boys jumping in to help the girls in volleyball. Teamwork encouraged by fiercely protective leaders. "We'll talk to them. But, there was no purple."

Cookies frosted and eaten. Wanders taken through muddy fields and slippery paths. Long stretches sat by an almost unnecessary fire. A kid who comes silently close after our final breakfast, testing my resolve to push us towards this "packing up and going home" phenomena that is supposed to happen next.

Another bus ride. Eking out final moments while we wait for parents.

Missteps and missed connections but also old habits and familiar patterns.

It was an interesting year. A raw 'just under the surface' kind of a year. A 'not what we were expecting' year. A year to run headlong into Grace and prove that it is still strong enough to hold us. That, even when the whole world is topsy turvy around us, there is reason to do this messy thing together.

Reason to spend time looking for beauty.

Reason to learn to trust.