Because They Love

There is a balance, in telling stories, of not centering too much of the focus on one thing or another. In telling the story of cleaning a wound at a VBS and of the raucous game of duck, duck, goose that had just occurred and the paper crowns that decorated the heads of dozens of little kings and queens.

In not telling too much without looking back to see what the pictures say.

Because, sometimes my head gets so wrapped up in the particulars that I forget to look at the bigger pattern. Forget to remember the peace that washes over our kids when they step out the other side of customs and the joy that crosses a massive language barrier when they slip into VBS mode or set foot on the basketball court and soccer field.

 We don't take our kids to Haiti so that they can change the world. We don't bring them to learn about poverty or to become more grateful for the things that they have. There are a thousand things that could be reasons for bringing them but aren't.

We bring them because, when they are here, when they are with Ms. Betty and Edwens and Dollus, they are welcomed into being a part of a global Church. Because they hear the names of other countries thrown around in an easy way that they simply do not in our little corner of the pacific northwest. Haitian friends play soccer games in the Dominican, go to school in Cuba, visit churches in Curacao, move to Canada, and attend trainings in South Africa as a matter of course.

Because Ms. Betty thinks that they can do anything, but also clucks at them to drink enough water and eat another piece of cake. Because one of the most powerful women in Haiti knows them by name and teaches them by example what it looks like to offer a cup of cool water to a stranger, whether it is ice cubes to whoever happens to wander up to the apartments or pouches of fresh drinking water to children and mamas, grandmas and big brothers, at VBS.

Ms. Betty teaches them to show up with full hands and a full heart and to offer them both to whomever is going to be there the longest, whomever is going to do the most good and disciple the most faithfully.

Teaches them that it doesn't need to start out beautiful to fill a need, it simply needs to start.

Ms. Betty loves them with the same fierce and protective love that she directs towards everyone in her path, and they learn that it doesn't matter where you come from or how old you are or what skills you bring to the table. It matters that you are willing and available, at 6:00 in the morning and 10:00 at night. It matters that you pray, it matters that you worship, and it matters that you love with everything that you have.

Edwens teaches them that the job is never done. Shows them how to express gratitude for the work that was done before you and how to never stop dreaming of ways to make it better.

Teaches them to pray for strength and demonstrates what it looks like to live in the faith that that strength will come.

Cares wildly and passionately and in a thousand directions at once and manages to fill their heads and their hearts with information that they never knew that they were missing. Slips into debrief time to hear them tell stories and rubs his hands together along with the rest of us in a ridiculous but honest declaration of, "Yaaaaay...God!"

Lays hands on these kids and prays for them and lights up their imaginations with the possibility of coming back to this place that they have come to love so much partially because Edwens loves it with everything that he has. And, if Edwens and Ms. Betty love a thing, then it must be worth loving too.

We bring our kids to Haiti to visit with their friends and their mentors, to become a part of a bigger story, to find the settled grace of moving mountains one small rock at a time, even when, sometimes, those mountains are the ones that they find in their own heads.

We bring them because they teach us the same things that they have been taught. How to love a place, body, mind, and soul, even when it tears you apart and exposes you, vulnerable, to things that you had never thought of dealing with before. How to let a place change you, not out pity or compassion or even empathy, but because you have been welcomed in and found yourself at home. And, we are all a little more ourselves when we are at home.

We bring them because there are littles who light up like the sun when they see them and teenagers who they are growing up with, even across this vast span of land and ocean.

We bring them because there is something about the sight of shooting stars and the taste of genips that gets in their blood and changes the trajectories of their lives, opens up new ideas and new ways of being.

We bring them because they love and they are loved, and, because, when there is a family reunion, you pack up the kids and you gather the luggage and you travel for as long as it takes. Because, this is family, and family is worth the cost.

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A Prayer

 "If there's life on other planets, did Jesus die for their sins too?"

We're flopped on our backs under a brilliant net of stars, and the nature of this team quickly makes itself known. These kids, and their leaders, are questions and certainty, faith and doubt all tied up into the most intricate and beautiful of knots.

Theology and missiology, soteriology and dating. Our nights are filled with unanswerable questions and open handed issues as kids present their cases and admit their sticking points. And, in a way that is unique to this team, our days overflow with more of the same.

Pulling weeds and moving rocks is a perfect time to talk about Calvinism and Arminianism. Long van rides are for discussing prophecy and tongues, the recent socio-polital history of Haiti, and some of the finer points of what it means to honor and hold space for your spouse.

They teach each other how to solve Rubik's cubes and sudoku puzzles, discuss the age of the universe and arguments for a local or global flood. And, occasionally, they fall silent, and the journals make their way to the porch, and they introvert together, reading out an important line from a book or passing a puzzle that has them stumped.

On the basketball court, they watch each other like hawks, absolutely determined that we will not have a repeat of last year's adventures. The returning girls walk back and forth with me, arms full of Nalgene bottles that are scooped up and refilled almost as soon as they are emptied. You sweat hard, you take electrolytes. You feel sick, you tell Jessica. Take breaks, sub out, push hard, but remember that we still have a week yet to go.

VBS after VBS with kiddos who want nothing more than to see your face spark to life the way that it does when you see them. Hours of chase and beach balls and made up games. Wires to be twisted around rocks and skits to be performed. Songs to dance to, hacky sack to play, and endless streams of babies and little ones to be picked up, held, rocked to sleep, fed crackers, or played peekaboo with.

The 'thing' that we've come to do is slower this year, smaller, and our kids respond with the same gentle honor and courage that they work so hard to show each other. Play with snapchat filters and let their phones be passed around by small people they have just met, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have your camera roll filled with selfies or group shots with a finger halfway through the screen. Color pictures. Filter inside when it gets too hot to sit quietly and play hand games until it is their turn at crafts. Play outside games that echo back inside the building with shouts and laughter, because, sometimes, duck, duck, goose and shoulder rides are competitive sports.

Shine with a peace and joy that transforms every moment of putting others before self into a pure act of worship.

Washing water bottles. Saving plates of food. Quietly guarding the steps, so that conversations can be held secure and private. Basketball games at six in the morning. Unloading and re-loading lumber and sheet metal. Being early to the gate for a sober family meeting on the way home. Playing a giant game of chess or snorkeling at the resort. Getting a haircut. Trying genips and fresh sugar cane. Worship becomes an action, is an action, the thing that you would give up something for.

Wake up early to sanitize hospital beds and sand walls before breakfast. Stay up late to sweep and wipe down floors by hand and then to mop them and then mop them again. Move equipment, pick up trash, sanitize and sanitize and sanitize some more. Dislocate a shoulder or get mowed down on the basketball court and pop back up to try it again. Circle up tight on the roof when we've had a night with all of the emotions and sing until until the guitarist's fingers are raw.

Lay hands and pray over each other 'Haitian style,' with twenty-one voices layering over each other in a constant stream of sound, because there is One Who Hears. One Who Hears when they are frustrated because they expected it to be harder, and One Who Hears when they didn't expect it to be this stinking hard.

One Who Hears their faith and their love, their doubt and their questions, their unity and their hurt, their beauty and their mess.

One who watches them more carefully than they scan the night sky for shooting stars or threats of rain. One who knows their goofy comments and their honest conversations long before the words fall from their lips. One who has been preparing their hearts for this thing, this messy, beautiful jumble of an easy, hard, sleep deprived, throw your expectations out the window, sort of a thing.

We're caught up somewhere in that tension again, somewhere part way between fear and peace, just far enough along to see Faithfulness in the road that we've walked, but still tangled up in the darkness and the violence of our own humanity.

Because, there are nights when 1:30 in the morning is beautiful, star lit, gentle, honest. Nights when it is painful and terrifying. Nights when we talk circles around ourselves only to admit that we don't have a stinking clue. And, nights when we simply do not sleep at all.

Days when we work for more hours than there is daylight. Days when we play in a brilliantly blue ocean, and days where it is enough to join in on the dedication of a partially finished surgical center.

Because, really, none of those days are as simple as that -- and none of those nights are either. Sometimes there is snot in the face masks and ugly dead patches in the coral and jelly fish that want to sting you. Sometimes play days have some of the most serious conversations, and sometimes work days are the ones where finger jousting occurs.

We fall. We misstep. We fumble our way through bringing a new youth pastor along on this journey and through reaching back to find closure for old stories. And, somehow, we stumble our way into astounding, sacrificial Grace in the midst of it all.

Because, right here, right now, on this planet, Christ walks beside us.

And, that is enough.

GuGo2016

Middle school camp is a whirlwind.

Middle school camp is always a whirlwind. A place where Holy looks like thirty minutes spent dragging kids into the shallow part of the river and dunking each other over and over again into the water that we have stirred up to brown with the constant scrambling of our feet. Looks like tiny sixth graders who bury each other in sand and kids who sass back at leaders who are teasing them.

Holy looks like chapel services with sixth grade girls stretched out long on one side, seventh and eighth grade boys on the other, and sixth grade boys lined up behind, all of them watching each other, learning, protecting. Becoming this crazy family that passes around my phone simply to have it and keeps hawk eyed track of who is injured or stressed out or tired.

We play endless hours of volleyball and gaga, climb up and down the hill and down and up again. Carry gunny sacks up to the top of the slide. Lounge in hammocks and make videos and weave our confessions into artwork down by the stream.

We get lost and frustrated and find our way again, learn that sometimes you have to turn around to where you came from to get back on course, and sometimes you simply have to follow someone who has walked the path before you.

We have worship stations that are art and nature walks, service and music, and, when night falls, we leave our schedule to the mercy of the growing darkness. Run through unseen blackberry bushes, search for counselors who disappear into the blackness, and sit under the stars to sing and talk with these kids who curl like puppies to keep each other warm, their shivering, tired frames struck by the Holy of this mountainside.

On the final night, we gather on the floor of the chapel, and our kids practice the kind of transparent honesty that comes so naturally to middle schoolers on the last full day of camp.

My girls make it back to the cabin mostly delirious with exhaustion and still wet with tears over stories that they hadn't expected to hear. They talk and then we pray, a steady stream of eleven year old voices that stretches until the calm ones are falling asleep where they sit, and we send the rest of them to bed, still holding hands and sniffling, because, sometimes, what they really need is rest.

They've spent the week making signs to decorate the wall outside our cabin and breakout times rifling through their Bibles to show each other favorite verses. We're all in one lodge again this year, and they've taken advantage of the hotel style hallways in the best ways possible, using them to check in with each other, to return belongings, to make plans for the day. To be family.

Because, our kids are in love with the water front, when no one else is there, and they plan their afternoons carefully to avoid the crowds of the larger camp that meets below us. We line the dock to watch people play on the log, life jacket clad bodies trying to push each other off of the spinning, padded cylinder, and the flat surface tips with the weight of us.

It's a little cold for the water most days, but no one seems to mind, not when the sun is brilliant on the last day and we can speak the easy language of pushing each other off and dunking each other under, of sand fights and mud fights and M&Ms given out for the completion of puzzles. Of forgetting rolled ankles for long enough to take advantage of these moments and of settling into now familiar spots to hear truth fall from each other's lips.

Because, at middle school camp, everything is Holy.

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Bridgetown 2016

Bridgetown is a lot of things.

Perhaps more so because I remember being here as a high schooler. Remember falling asleep to winged horses on the windows and the shouts and music of life downtown. Remember waking up to brush my teeth with a finger and roll up my sleeping bag, not knowing what came next.

I remember sitting on warm red bricks to offer coffee and sandwiches and walking under the bridge during Night Strike to catch a glimpse of Holy that took my breath away.

Bridgetown is where we go to watch our kids be strong.

Not the earth shattering, news making kind of strong but the kind that it takes to squat down or take a knee and have a conversation with someone that you might not have otherwise. A, stumble through a prayer on an empty street corner, do the thing that you don't want to do, completely uncertain of what happens next, kind of a courage.

Sometimes, traffic is stopped for miles on the freeway, so we climb out of vehicles and share snacks and quickly discover that nearly everything in the desert is prickly. We pause at a rest stop, breathe in the smoke that was blocking the road, and the John Day kids remember last year's fire, watch with anxious eyes, uncurl a little when the mountains turn green and we have left it behind us.

And, it's a little thing. A move too fast and you might miss it, mostly wordless, thing. But, it is there, and they prove themselves strong.

On Bridgetown trips we ask them to be stubborn.

For the, "This is too hard!" to be followed by standing to their feet and making it happen anyways. To sort their way through to the bottom of the clothing pile, and to find a way to keep walking, block after block and mile after mile, even when the only shoes that you brought for the week are cowgirl boots.

For a prayer walk that seems to take place on an endless stream of corners and for waiting awkwardly until someone takes the initiative to offer a coffee or a sandwich.

Two of my boys have their own unique reasons to be thrown into tailspins when they don't know where or when the next meal is coming from, and yet we send them into Urban Plunge with no money or food for breakfast or lunch -- or the knowledge that they will be getting dinner. "How are you going to get breakfast? What are you going to do?"

They give me that look like I am murdering puppies, but they bite their tongues, and none of the fear in their eyes spills off of their lips.

Stubborn. Strong. Courageous.

Do the hard thing. Do it scared. I'm right here. I will keep you safe. But, I won't keep you comfortable.

And, they figure it out, these five kids who can't decide whether they are glad that I am there, or frustrated that I won't simply tell them the answers already. Find breakfast. Find lunch. Find ways to entertain themselves in between.

Basketball with a sleeping bag. Hot potato. Conversations with whoever happens to walk by.

We don't travel far. Drawn like magnets back to a single park, they nap in the shade and sketch tic tac toe boards onto the blacktop with tiny wooden crosses that we picked up along the way. The crosses don't survive the encounter, but I suppose that is rather the point. We are here this week to encounter the Divine, and the cross, as end game, never survives that interaction. The beams are separated, the body taken down, and the grave makes room for new Life.

These are resurrection kids, because they are part of a resurrection people.

Anxiety, fear, discomfort, uncertainty; those things will never be end game, because the grave makes way for new Life.

For Night Strike, where we wash feet and serve meals and hand out clothing. Where hair is cut and nails are painted and conversations are had. Where everything that should be messy and raw is covered with grace and beauty instead, because everyone here has the right to be just as human as everyone else.

"I think that this is my favorite part." We find a breath in the constant whirlwind of clothing distribution, watch the throb of life under this overpass, and two of the boys turn to me with brilliant eyes.

"Mine too." Right now, we aren't being stubborn. In the midst of this noise and the subtle waft of headache inducing smoke, they are more at peace than they have been all day. "This is what church is supposed to look like. This is Holy."

Church is Night Strike. Church is service projects and hand crafted invitations. Love Feast and hours spent listening to and laughing with and learning from some of the ones whom they have been always taught to fear. Because, a good meal can tear down all sorts of barriers.

Church is sometimes getting lost and driving around in circles for a solid hour because no one can quite decide where you should be. Church is fort wars that start out playful and end up messy. Church is kids' club and face paint and water soaked high schoolers. Church is laughter and sweat and checking the rearview mirror every few minutes, because one of the boys managed to smash his head into the concrete moments before we piled back into the vans.

Church is doing it joyful and doing it scared.

For this week, for these kids and these leaders, church is Bridgetown.

Broken bread and coffee at the water front or a park, a soup kitchen or a niche in the sidewalk. Baptism by water bottle from a giggling little girl. Confession that is more than simply stories heard and treasured, but the changes that those stories work in our lives, because, all too often, we, as the Church, also have confessing to do.

The power of touch to heal the things that are sick within us, not forever, but in this Sacred Now.

Confirmation as we learn a new catechism, a new way of hearing, seeing, understanding. And, a house father who teaches us that not every calling is glamorous, but every calling has value.

Church as Love with skin on.

Grace Upon Grace

Royal Family Kids Camp has a way of making the rest of the world come to a halt.

Shootings and protests and the world's new found ability to wander around and 'catch' imaginary creatures all stop at the gate, or, perhaps, somewhere a little farther down the highway, where we first pick up cell signals again.

Everything focuses in, centers, becomes about this moment and these campers and the things that are happening right here, right now, and nowhere else.

"That's why you go to a big training before camp," my eleven year old leans in close with a soft shake of her head when the half dozenth pause in the movie pulls a frustrated groan from thirty-six campers, "so you can learn how to not get angry at kids and to smile."

She doesn't have the word for it, but I know what she means. She means that these red shirted 'grown ups' are overflowing with Grace.

Grace for littles who get stuck, who get sad, who get angry, who get anxious, or happy, or excited, or overly tired. Grace in counselors who let their little boys comb through their hair with dinner forks and who curl the hundredth strand of little girl hair for fancy dinner.

Grace when kiddos wake up belting out Gold in the early pre-coffee hours of the morning (Proverbs 27:14) and when we stumble our way through dances that the kids have learned at Breakfast Club. Grace when we stay up late putting together scrapbooks and writing letters and Grace when we get up early to shiver our way to a Polar Bear Swim.

Camp is marked by counselors who help to 'hunt' chipmunks and catch every spider that we come across, by hands gently cupped around moths that made the mistake of resting on the nurses' cabin and peering into branches for hidden caterpillars.

Camp is hula hooping and tea parties and costumed children who wander through meals and activity stations as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

It is CITs and staff members who drop whatever they are doing to walk us to the bathroom or watch us make our way back to the cabin, counselors who end the week realizing how very little they have found the time to shower, and campers who manage to have a 'great day,' even when the big feelings are trying take control of their little hearts and minds and bodies.

It's girls who trust enough to let you save them from bees and who ask to sit with their brother for a meal, because they don't get to live with him right now. It's kids who lean in close for the scary parts of the movie and who finally, on the very last day of camp, decide that you are allowed to braid their hair.

And, it is re-doing those braids three times before lunch, so that they will still look 'perfect' when she gets home.

When your camper who spent last year blacking out every word of her letters to you finally sends ones that you can read, because it's less scary to claim you, now that you aren't quite so close. When you spend hours practicing the hand motions to the eleven year old's favorite Music*lly and the nine year old doesn't have the patience for you to braid both sides of her hair at once.

When the bobble heads have been painted and the birdhouses/bug barns/tool boxes have been built. When there isn't a single screw left to undo in take apart and when dress up is wet and muddy. When their earbuds have been practically glued into their ears since Birthday Party and their name signs are rolled up into purple trash bags for the trip home.

When camp is over, we can only pray that they remember Grace and Love.

That they remember that not all grown ups get angry at kids. That some grown ups smile and ask them how their day has been and make sure that they always have enough to eat.

That, no matter what comes next, there will always be a place in the mountains where time comes to a halt.

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!

Prayer Like Breathing

"I think that I need self control." One of the girls who has been nonsense talking a mile a minute laughs when I repeat the directions a second - third - time and her brain finally slows down enough to hear them.

"Maybe." My own twisting line of sticker dots is headed towards the 'patience' line, and I hand her a sheet of brightly colored circles. Because, there simply 'happens' to be the exact same number of children as there are sticker sheets, so that even my oldest-sibling always-watching-out-for-everyone-else kiddos don't have to think twice or figure out how to share.

We're a little wild this week, hands and arms and legs bumping and jostling and bouncing off of each other, as if the action itself can prove that they are real and safe and loved, and her eyes widen as I repeat the instructions. Choose a character trait that you need help with and talk to Jesus about that thing as you put down a row of stickers.

"I think that I am going to just put mine random."

She deals with anxiety by trying to distract herself. Asking to go to the bathroom after she has participated in something in front of the large group. Playing with the buckle on her Bible during story. Keeping constant watch on the clock. Randomly placing stickers so that she doesn't have to worry about messing up.

At almost eleven, she is only beginning to learn about this Grace that covers us. Grace that knows her past and her future, knows every well earned fear in her little heart.

We first met at RFKC. She has every reason for this constant fight for acceptance, approval. But, there is something magic that falls over these girls when they pray with their hands.

Trace labyrinths with their fingers. Weave strips of fabric into miniature looms. Cootie catchers. Paint. Duct tape. Markers.

Sticker after sticker after sticker.

They go calm and silent in the sunshine, forget about the grass poking through the blanket and the third graders who are within shouting distance farther down the lawn. Forget about sore feet and worries about what we are going to do at camp over the 4th of July. Forget about the littles screaming and laughing on the play set across the parking lot and the dogs in the truck closest to us. Forget about everything but their conversation with the One Who Hears.

If we have practiced anything this year, it might be the fact that prayer is always a thing that is worth fighting for. That, when our bodies are wild and our minds won't stop and our hearts are full, there is all the more reason to pray.

Some weeks I almost give it up. Surrender to the chaos. Slap a few new pieces into their notebooks and take them to the hill to run off some steam. But, this is worth fighting for.

They can feel changes nipping at their heels. The end of the school year. Transitions. Summer. And, we spend the first part of our morning going over the dates. Over and over and over again. This is what is happening. This is when it is happening. This is what there will be to eat. This is who will be there.

Rip papers. Take pictures. Run up and down a grassy slope and scream at the top of our lungs that, "Jesus loves you!" Play keep away in the hall. Trade name tags. Misplace Bibles more times than ought to be possible.

Grace. 

Grace that shows up in the middle and in between. 7th grade girls who help me search out glue sticks for the 5th graders and who fill my phone with a hundred pictures of the same carpet square, doodling over the selfies left behind by 7th grade boys. Kids who whisper prayer requests when they are supposed to be listening to a lesson.

 Shoulders that bounce off my arm just a little above the elbow as one tells me about being chased around the playground by four-year-olds and a trip across the parking lot to search for quarters for another who wants to buy cookies. Made up song motions with the one who stands a hairsbreadth from my arm, almost occupying the same space. Two with almost matching names who ping pong off of my sides the way that they were taught by an older brother.

A freshman boy who stops to talk in the foyer, "which one do you like better, middle school or high school?"

Both.

It's one of those weeks, where we walk out of a leaders' meeting to find high school boys on the roof, because sensory seekers, y'all. The middle and elementary schoolers aren't the only ones bubbling over with this wild energy that comes with sunshine and warmth and summer feeling several weeks closer than it actually is.

We play musical chairs in the parking lot and cram into newly formed rows of pews. Count kids. Watch carefully. Rejoice when the ones who could choose to disappear mid activity don't. Pray and sing and listen and pray some more.

Grace.

One of the senior boys takes his turn to share with the younger classes, and I am blinded once again by the faithfulness of Divine Love.

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever."

Last week's senior has been going to Haiti with us since he was a wide eyed freshman, learning valuable lessons about sunscreen and giving piggy back rides until his shoulders bled.

This week, we hear from a senior who didn't live here his freshman year at all.

But, still.

He tells his story, and I remember marking dates on my calendar to pray for his sister's surgery. Praying through the long weeks that led up to that point. Sitting in an unfinished basement with cluster girls scattered on half a dozen pieces of furniture and hearing the outcome.

He was only in ninth grade, fourteen, maybe fifteen years old. Incredibly uncertain about this whole Jesus thing. But, one of my girls had a friend in another state who was sick and needed prayer. So, we prayed. And, now he's sitting here telling us about it.

"There [we] come to the shocking, but at the same time self evident, insight that prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence." The Wounded Healer, pg 17

Grace.

Grace even for leader hearts that sometimes need a reminder: prayer is a thing worth fighting for.

By the time they graduate, I have prayed a couple of hundred hours for each one of these precious kids in their high school years alone.

There are plenty of leader things that I will never come close to perfecting, but I can do this thing. I can pray for them like breathing. Type out prayers or write them long hand. Talk out loud in my car or silently in my head. Pray in words and pictures and feelings. Pray for their courage and their growth, their peace and their comfort. Pray that they would know their value and know how to value others.

Pray for boldness and healing, curiosity and security. Pray for answers to questions and questions to answers. Pray that they would know this Love.

When they are scared, sick, hurt, anxious, excited, exhausted and the Spirit nudges, I can pray. When old hurts or doubts worm their way to the surface, when lies whisper in their ears and a thousand different things keep them awake at night. When my Atlanta stuck self can feel the exact moment that they pull into compound in Fond Parisien or into the church in Fond Cheval. When there is nothing left to offer. When I can't do anything else.

I can pray.

Careful dot after careful dot. Connecting stories. Finding quiet in the midst of overlapping conversations, jostling feet and elbows and thrown hips.

Prayer like breathing.

It isn't much. But, perhaps it is.

Shout for Joy

Across the globe, churches are beginning their liturgies for this Fourth Sunday of Easter, "Shout for joy to God, all the earth..."

"We went through fire and through water," the Psalm continues when I go to look it up, "yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance."

Lutheran readings come out of the twenty-first chapter of John. The gentle love of a risen Savior. "Children," he calls to the disciples, "do you have any fish?"
"No."
They had been up all night. Nothing. Frustration, perhaps. Confusion at being back in this place that they thought they had left behind. And, then...a man.

I wonder, as they moved their nets to the other side, if they had begun to dare. Dare to hope that this stranger on the shore might not be a stranger after all. If the nets filled and their hearts didn't jump with Peter as he threw on his cloak and ran splashing through the waves.

"Shout for joy to God, all the earth."

In our own strange way, we find ourselves joining in, celebrating the beautiful things that God has done. There are balloons in the hallways and snacks by the doors. Servers who offer treats and beach balls that fly through the service.

Sunshine. Laughter. The careful tying together of these layers of stories.

Celebration. Frustration. Confusion. Food.

The messy beauty of throwing on our cloaks even as we jump out of the boat -- because Jesus is here!

I have a couple of barefoot girls in amongst my 5th graders, almost-middle-schoolers who kick off their flip flops before service, leaving them beside mine in our space under the stairs. While the shepherds pray, they press their faces up towards the window in the door and watch the goings on. Watch as we talk to Jesus about their barefoot selves.

Oldest siblings with eyes that glow when I slip my lanyard around their neck and leave them to check each other in. Girls who save me a seat when I slip away to get the power point started and grin when I come back, having given a crash course to the high schooler who must have been standing in just the right spot in the hallway to be emergency recruited.

Because, today, that's a little bit how we roll.

Foot races in the gym. Question and answer time. Notebooking at the speed of light. Parent pick-ups. And, then they are off.

The 7th grade girls are already here, two of them waiting in the doorway, beautifully certain that, when they don't know what's going on, they can find a leader.
"It's set up different," they shrug. "I didn't know if I could go in."

It is different. It's very different this morning. But, they practice grace and respect and honor. Practice flexibility and good humor. Make the most of the sunshine. And, a few of them crawl deep into the bushes for a game of sardines. Dirty. Scratched up. Together.

Middle school is messy today, in ways that have nothing to do with the kids. But, there is prayer and there is worship, and, as much as our leaders hearts might want to shield them from from anything that might touch this hour and a half of sacred time, there is, in the midst of the brokenness -- because of the brokenness -- a beautiful picture of the Body. A Body that is bigger than simply the people who typically occupy this room.

Step in to take up the slack. Cover for each other's weaknesses. Pray. Show grace. Honor everyone.

"Children, do you have any fish?"
"No." Our hands are empty. Our hearts have been poured out. We're at a loss. But...there is a man on the shore.

Jesus.

The Body of Christ comes, in part, in the form of a woman who steps in to seamlessly lead our kids through an explanation of the role that they played in the celebration, to direct them towards other leaders for music, and to speak for a few moments before they go. As if catching runaway trains were the most natural thing in the world.

We shoo them out the door and, for once, clean up the remains without any smaller, helping hands.

Freshmen slip through on their way from the high school service and joke about my no longer "pregnant" belly. We stand in the hospitality room and eat berries out of tiny cups with tinier forks. Go out to lunch. Talk about Haiti and gymnastics on horseback and a dozen things in between.

Sunshine. Service. Intersect.

High schoolers who are full to overflowing with the warmth and sunshine of spring break. Camping trips. Game nights. Prom "proposals."

They pull out the frisbee and there is a tae kwon do demonstration that ends with a broken board in the parking lot. It's a little bit celebration and a lot a bit everyday. This is fish and bread on the shore. Doing our level, messy best to care for these kids, who are loved more than they will ever know. To care for each other.

To laugh and learn names. To play a game. Sing some songs. Listen to a lesson.

Because, the first answer to, "...do you love me?" is, "Feed my lambs."

What Love Looks Like

Friday night of spring break finds seven high school leaders dressed up in wacky costumes and scattered around a shopping center. Because, yes, we love these kids.

Love them enough to become a pregnant woman, a tourist, an old lady, Waldo, Moses. To stand behind clothing racks and make new friends with employees who laugh a little harder with each new group that comes in.

Find a leader. Take a picture. Move to the next store.

Leader hunt. Ice cream. Hang time. Home.

But, as we linger through the end and talk about missions trips for the dozenth time this week, I am reminded not only of the fact that it is Haiti season -- because it is clearly Haiti season! -- but of how very far these kids have come.

Through an old youth pastor, to no youth pastor, to a new youth pastor who has shed his Moses costume to play ping pong and straighten couches, his eyes bright as he spills out ideas in the moments after the last of the kids have scattered.

Through Haiti trips and John Day trips and winter retreats.

#change

#dangerous

#IDinJC

#freedomsrisk

From nights with a dozen kids to nights with ninety and everything in between.

Game nights. Clusters. The weekly dance of gathering in this place.

Shooting stars and wildfires. Long hours of prayer and Happy Day hoe downs. Hundreds of garbage bags filled and emptied and dozens of hours spent cleaning or painting walls.

They have stuck with it. Made a home here. Made a family.

And, even when we look a little wacky. When we sometimes can't find each other in stores and a younger set of the boys can't help but poke at the pillow and ask a million questions about the "baby."

When we are scattered on camping trips and family vacations, and students and adults alike are already crunching the numbers of Haiti logistics. Even when...

There is something in this room that speaks of Love.

Waterfall

It's a weekend for standing too close to a waterfall. 

For reaching out to touch the nearest, trickling edge as it eats away at this ancient rock. For trusting to a stranger's long left rope as you scramble up and down steep trails. For letting the rain mist you and the spray soak you and for climbing up through crevices that hundreds of feet have traveled before you.

For driving away and coming home. For hikers that follow each other, sometimes from a distance and sometimes close enough to ask questions, as we pick our way over unmarked trails that are wider down here than they appeared from the cliff edge.

Because, sometimes, you have to get closer than the placard and the railing.

And, it sounds an awful lot like an analogy in hindsight, although it was never intended to be one. Never intended to be anything more than an impulsive need to get out of town and find something wildly and undeniably bigger and older than my single and simple life.

A need for twisting roads and green fields and towering pillars of stone, for finding a place where water cuts through the desert, not with the partially tamed and well utilized breadth of the Columbia, but with the rush of rapids and a thunder that floats like clouds.

It’s a weekend for 5th grade girls to run up and down this hill until the wind steals the breath from their lungs, to play this game simply because I’ve told them that it is the time of year to play. Because they know that the girls who went before them played this. Because I promised that we would go outside. 

They are too wriggly for proper explanations, rolling and sliding down half dead grass, shivering, verbally clambering over the top of each other. Landing in piles of helter skelter limbs when they can’t quite sort through who is going to jump on who when the Caller yells out the word “service.” 

Service means landing bridal style in each other’s arms. Leadership require forming a line. And, for this week, we don’t get any further than that. We leave the watercolors and the glue and explanations for next week, and, instead, they practice trusting that I will catch them when they come flying through the air. 

They smack each other with floor pillows when we maybe should be praying. Doodle and whisper their way through the story. Need the same instruction repeated a second and third time, too excited about finishing to go outside to actually finish so that we can go outside. 

But, we make it. We smile and we make messes and we quite literally tumble our way through.

  And, Sunday fades into a Monday where the kids at Bible club seem to have gotten the memo that this is a week for strange moods and holding space for each other. Space for first graders to use song time as an excuse to be held onto and story to curl as close as "pockets on the floor" rules will allow. For the 4th grade boy who grins every time that he stretches out and uses my shin as an uncomfortable pillow.

For kinders who come to run foot races as we review the story and first graders who slip into the kinder group to make a craft.

*s***h and H**d*n lay nose to nose on the floor, heads bent in concentration over the picture that they are working on. D*nn* comes up for the millionth hug. We split the final rice crispy into seven equal pieces, so that everyone can get an extra bite.

These are familiar paths. Ropes that we have laid down to guide each other over the steepest places. Unmarked and always changing. Wider when we trust to the next step than when we try to picture everything that lies ahead.

It's a rainy, cloudy, green in the middle of the desert, waterfall sort of week.

And, sometimes the line between miserable and beautiful is mainly formed by how many times we remember to stop and breathe. 

Remember to trust to Grace.