Brownie Sunday

We spend hours together as a Haiti team on Brownie Weekend. Story team meeting. Training. Brownie baking. Sign making. Supply collecting. Learning personalities and going over packing lists. Setting things up. Tearing things down. Selling hundreds of brownies in between.

And, it is a beautiful, sticky, exhausting sort of a thing, with kids who jump in to wash dishes, wipe floors, carry trash cans. Sit and wait.

There is a lull early on Sunday, a long line of teenagers flopped against floor and cupboards in the hospitality room, and they pull out their phones to practice Creole.

These are our kids.

Focused, efficient, stubborn, willing to fight for the things that they see as right and true.

Playful, passionate, responsive, responsible.

One of my new sixth graders has established herself as my intern for the day, collecting name tags and counting heads in elementary Sunday school, letting me pull her into the game, and then running dozens of circles with me. Around and around and around the church, as we check on kids and brownies and stations.

She checks the number of steps that we have taken -- 5.25 miles between the start of church and the end of it -- and adds to the passcode on my phone that was set by a once-upon-a-middle-schooler, who is now her brother's Sunday School teacher.

Adds to it, but doesn't change it, because the most important thing to the kids about Jessica's phone is that everyone knows how to get in. The older sets of my Sunday school kids knew the code for the storage room, and still know it, eight years later. The younger sets know the code for my phone.

Middle school is a combination of skidding in late, just in time for the game, and ducking out early, with an in between of hugs from eighth graders whenever they think they might have found an opening and sixth graders who have picked up a habit of gripping my arms like baby monkeys.

More brownies.

Clean up. Church. Brownies. Intersect with games that involve leftover brownies.

Drinks for the kids from the closest coffee shop and a couple of students who I haven't seen since last summer but who tell me that they would like to start coming. Breakouts in a stuffy room and long talks afterwards as we try to sort out the intricacies of a Haiti team that can wound each other with the same efficiency that they use to clean tables or slice brownies.

Because, these kids are worth fighting for. This team is worth fighting for.

They are worth longs days and awkward conversations and learning to lead them in the best way that we possibly can.

They are messy. We are messy. We are going to a place that is messy.

But, there is beauty and grace in the midst of the mess.

In the midst of nervous 6th graders and 8th graders who are having all of the feels. In middle school leaders who share their testimonies and elementary schoolers who giggle as a game of Blog Tag sends them flying off across the grass.

In freshmen girls who help me pull drink cups out of the trash cans and empty the liquid into a slop bucket and juniors who are always willing to close our breakout group in prayer.

In graduated seniors who go straight from brownies to a training for Royal Family Kids Camp and in a youth pastor who has proven himself willing to walk this road.

Even when we are elbow deep in ice cream buckets, there is Grace to cover.

Grad Weekend

Grad weekend is a series of weekends this year, and, I am reminded that, once upon a time, I wrote "letters" to kids who might never read them. So...

To the graduated seniors,

Have I told you recently how proud I am of you? 

Life is complicated and messy, and high school is it's own very unique kind of a struggle. I am proud of the way that you have handled it. The ways that you have let yourself grow and change and the ways that you have stayed uniquely yourself. It isn't easy work, learning to sharpen each other, as iron sharpens iron, without slicing someone open by accident.

Because, you've had to learn that you are not weapons, not your words, not your actions, not your knowledge.

Garden shears and kitchen knives are no less sharp than swords or bayonets, but they are tools for creating, rather than for tearing down. And, you have graduated into a world that is in desperate need of building up. Orlando. Syria. Brexit. US elections that seem almost too caricatured to be true. This isn't a world that needs another weapon.

In the midst of that brokenness, live the Love and Grace and Mercy, that we couldn't possibly have spent enough hours talking about - but that I pray that you experienced and continue to experience every time that you turn around.

Church people don't always get it right. I don't always get it right. You won't always get it right. But, it is the most beautiful thing in the world to keep on trying, to live like Grace is worth it.

Grace is worth it.

Look for beauty in the midst of the mess and run towards it with everything that you have.

You know just as well as anyone that beauty is sometimes a child at Royal Family Kids Camp who wants to play kickball in a penguin costume and sometimes a day in Haiti that doesn't go as planned. Sometimes it is a brilliant sunset and sometimes it is sitting beside a friend who has had a terrible week.

Beauty is Grace and Grace is Beauty, and sometimes it is all a terrible mess, because humans are messy.

But, you aren't defined by your mess. (And, neither is anyone else.)

You are Beloved. Redeemed. Seen. Known. Loved.

You are Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Powerfully Loved, and Uniquely Gifted by a God who is Great, Gracious, Glorious, and Good, and who is a calling you to a place of #freedom where you can be #changed by that great love.

Congratulations, you did the thing.

You graduated from high school, and you've got the rest of life stretched out long before you, but don't get so caught up in the big things that you forget to pay attention to the small ones. Pray just about as often as you breathe. Look for Jesus in the Bible, but also look for Him in the faces of friends and strangers.

Climb the hill. Jump in the river. Swim in the lake. Do ridiculous things just for the sake of doing them.

Make dinner with your family. Text your friends at 3:00 in the morning when you need to talk. Spend your time and your energy on other people and take time for yourself to recharge.

Love God. Love people. And, remember who you are.

I'm proud of you!