Youth Camp

I’m at youth camp, but I don’t know any of the youth. I know many of the leaders; they used to be MY youth or MY volunteers. I spoke this morning, delivering what I felt was God’s Word and it felt great, but it’s different - better - when you actually know who you are talking to. Sometimes I think about becoming a speaker; sharing God's message to gymnasiums brimming with high energy teens or church pews teeming with eager listeners. But maybe that is just another strange cultural construct we have in the west. We let perfect strangers tell us about intimate things and bring us to tears in large groups in the hopes that… what? We will suddenly be better people? Less broken? More lovable? I've participated in more than my share of these events. Youth rallies and retreats and camps and huge city wide events with big name music groups and packed sporting arenas and prayer ministry teams ready to intercept anyone who looks like they might be tearing up. I know this all sounds like a quip, but I do believe there is some space for these kinds of events. My heart is becoming simpler, though, and I think wouldn’t it be something if our every day people who we loved and trusted helped us learn truths of identity, belonging and healing as we stumbled along together? Imagine living in a community where we don't  need self help speakers or televangelists to show us the wounds of Christ and the love that put them there.

I sat with a couple of girls tonight asking them if they wanted to share their obvious pain with me, or if I could pray with them. We had no previous relationship. I exchanged awkward hugs with these girls while maneuvering around my clinging progeny who were still awake way past the point of reason. It’s kind of disorienting for me. This whole youth-thing used to be my show. I was the one who knew the kids to their cores. I knew when things went down in their families. I took them to rehab, brought food and beds to households and prayed with kids who were dealing with assault. I twice grieved with youth after the death of a parent and twice with families after the death of their youth. I knew the game. I lived my life with and for these kids and I feel like a stranger now.

Maybe that’s why I want to be a speaker, so I can be there for the “big” moments. I think it’s probably an ego thing. I like to feel like a big deal, and there isn't a gig like being a speaker to put me in the centre of attention. If I can take any lessons from my past life of youth ministry, my current struggle to become meaningfully reconnected to youth ministry, topped by my current life situation as mom to a toddler and preschooler it should be this: forget about being some big speaker. Those most important parts of life are not the big, emotionally charged moments. They are the small moments in between where we learn to live. Everyone loves a good high - even a good, clean, youth rally one - but they aren't sustainable. Connect with the people who are available to connect with and live out that crucified love in a way that is real and meaningful and helps us all stumble a little farther in the right direction. I don’t need to tell people I don’t know about the transformative love of Christ. I just have to let my life be transformed by it so it can spill out around me. So the people I know know how dear they are. How much love there is for them, and that I’ll do my best to be there to help hold them up when they need the bracing. I don’t need a youth group to do God’s work in. Not my old youth group, and not even a new one in my new town.

 I’ve got two little lights flitting around my ankles who need to be kept burning bright, a strong, energetic visionary who could use better support and encouragement from me, and a handful of budding friendships with amazing people who I have so much to learn from. In fact, I need to simplify even more. At this point I often think it’s more about what I can offer, but true relationship is simply about abiding with one another. I was usually mentor and not simply friend; being in reciprocal relationships is pretty new for me. Now I have the space to receive as well as give, and that is a lesson I need to be schooled in.

So maybe I can pursue studies that will make me more theological than I currently am, and maybe I can help out at youth camp with my old, dear friends and their teens, and maybe one day I’ll be able to throw myself back into Youth Ministry full throttle; but now I can go right back to that same old lesson that resonates through my being and annoyingly pops into every piece of writing I attempt. Apparently I have only one lesson to keep learning and therefore only one thing to say to myself (and by extension you, my reader): settle into the here and now, love mightily, keep my heart and head open to learn from and latch on to the grace that is extended to me from so many beauties.

Please excuse me for repeating the same epiphany over and over. I am obviously a slow learner.


Peace.

Summer Fantasy

I have a summer fantasy. It started way back during university. It goes like this: Summer is time for travel, reading books, drinking iced beverages, staying up late, camping, campfires, connecting with friends, fairs and fair food, swimming in the river/lake/ocean, exploring creative outlets, music festivals, flip flops, falling in love all over again while we go on midnight walks holding hands and having sex pretty much where ever and whenever we please. And fit, tanned bodies.

This is my summertime reality: I am sitting here on my unmade bed, using a broken laundry basket for a desk, stealing a moment to desperately write down the discord I am feeling realizing my summer actually is nursing a nearly two year old toddler and wondering how to make it come to a satisfactory end for both of us; hiding from the hot, hot heat in my basement; folding and stashing away six loads of laundry, wondering why I can’t keep only those six loads worth, and chuck out every other stitch of clothing that remains in our dressers and closets. It is scraping and scraping and scraping the paint on the deck and house so it can get that new, preserving coat or three. It is sealing the roof and seems on a leaking ’77 camping trailer we bought to help make some of my summer dreams a reality. It is spending more money than we thought we would on these upgrades and wondering if $300 more for a paint spray gun will be worth the time we hope it will save us. It is navigating two small kids and a husband who is equally hot, tired, grumpy, and full of his own dashed summer dreams, dreams, that like mine have become overwhelmed with home maintenance. It is forcing time to talk and touch so we don’t end up yelling later on. Instead of falling in love, sometimes it feels more like clenching the thread of love that holds us together and desperately trying to remember we are on the same team, working for the same goal. Hoping for the same dreams to come true.

I used to make elaborate plans for travel and leisure. Precious few of them ever came to fruition - and usually because they were paid for somehow by work. Then, being work trips, were not exactly about luxuriating on a beach somewhere. Still amazing trips though. Many, many of my future plans and schemes were really only wasted hours dreaming dreams that never came to pass. I feel too maxed out to dream right now. Yet, even now there is potential to be cooking up elaborate plans for the next five years. My husband wants to dream. I want to settle down deeply in the here and now. I don’t want to look any farther ahead than supper with friends tonight and kids swimming lessons that needed to be booked a week in advance. Being in this season of small people has seemed to weigh me down to a near stop. I took a lot of my dreaming, scheming ways into my first two years of parenthood, but I am resigning myself more to the snail’s pace at which we move through life, and the incredible changeability that happens moment to moment in the lives of small children and all they encompass, even while everything seems to also unbelievably be constantly the same.

I was gifted a mantra about six months ago. It came as I lay in the darkness of the January and February bed, reading books about permaculture while my baby slept beside me, starting tomato and asparagus seedlings in paper cups on top of my fridge. I was voracious in my need to create this garden oasis of berries, herbs and vegetable abundance; however much landscaping is required to make the steep hillsides in my yard terraced garden plots. Unemployed I may be, and unafraid to wield a shovel and wheelbarrow, but time is not one of the currencies I can trade in greatly. That exchange happens more highly in the area of stories read, baths given, strollers packed for outings and the general preparation and deconstruction of meals. I realized that my garden dreams were not going to come true this season. Probably not next season either. I could only do what was in my hand to do, a little here and there, a half hour stolen between pushing swings, or weeds quickly pulled up from the cracks in the sidewalk as we draw with chalk. More than this space, these people will always be my responsibility, and the space, the children and I will always be a work in progress. So while things have ground to a near halt for me, the mantra that has filled my heart with optimism and allowed me to breathe gratefully, has brought me back to living very presently in this moment only is, “I have all the time in the world.”

When I am tempted to become anxious about what may come five years from now, when I get frustrated that grass has been choking out my perennial beds, when my hugelkultur lays half-finished for the season, and the other little projects are scattered about unmade I can breathe and try not to worry about it. I can read one more story. I can take my kids to the creek instead. I can scrape the deck paint and tackle each task a little at a time. I have all the time in the world.

Instead of dreaming of being away, doing exotic things, or spending energy dreaming of a somewhat murky future with potential career options or relocations, I can rest knowing I have all the time in the world.

I’ve heard the “go-getters” in my travels say things like, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” It might seem utter nonsense to base my life on an idea that is actually completely false. I do not, in fact, have ALL the time in the WORLD. Don’t think I don’t understand that. It is very apparent to me. I think the truth of “All the time in the world” is inextricably linked to “The most time you have.” It is only now. At once, “now” is both fleeting and eternal.  I’m not saying that I’m never going to plan ahead for something; or that I’m going to stop dreaming about the things that light my spark. I’m just choosing to be here, now. Imperfectly, I assure you, but I think this kind of presence in time is actually where all the dreams come true. As for my summer fantasy, there may not be fit bodies, but there are definitely flip flops. 

Story Time

I’m back. I think.

It has been a long time since I posted on this blog. Not because my head doesn’t overflow with ideas about what I could write, but honestly, I just haven’t been able to justify taking the time to write in this medium. I am lucky if I take the time to simply write in my journal biweekly. There is only so much time and energy in one gal, so I have to be purposeful about how I spend that energy.

Don’t think I am a disciplined person who has a solid handle on the minutes of my day, making them as productive as possible. This is not the case. Last night I was up ‘til two am watching Netflix and then researching when the next season of the show I was bingeing on (3.5 hours last night) releases its third season. Right now, while the kids are playing, I could be washing the floor or scrubbing the bathrooms. I am not doing those things. I am not folding the laundry in the basket, or transferring the wet batch into the dryer (or out on to the racks on my deck for a more energy efficient solution) or working out. I am drinking semi-warm coffee, with the breakfast dishes on the table, and I am typing a blog post that as of yet I only have a vague idea where it might be going.

It doesn’t really inspire readership. Honestly, after taking a long break from writing for an audience other than me, it is hard to find the cojones to believe that anything I might possibly say would be worth the time it would take another person to read. What do I have to say that hasn’t already been said? Probably nothing. What do I know about writing that would contribute to the literary integrity of the interwebs? Again, nothing. I am embarrassingly amateur, naïve in many of life’s’ experiences, and limited in my ability to articulate in writing anything of lasting value. It doesn’t really paint a picture of profound insight or usefulness, I know.  

I don’t even have a purpose for my blog. It isn’t a mommy blog. It isn’t a blog about dreads anymore, since I cut that short. (Bah hahaha!) This isn’t a blog about art or food, how-tos, travel or faith. I can’t even say I am a writer trying to get myself out there because I haven’t posted anything in nearly a year. As of right now, I would say this is simply an extension of my journal; my story, written for me and the few friends who might bother to read, and possibly the odd stranger who might stumble here by mistake.

So why write at all? Couldn’t I just accomplish this task within the red binding of my journal and save the energy, effort and brain space of any of you out there who might read?

This is why I am choosing to write: Because story matters. My story matters. Your story matters. Our stories are the things that link us to each other. They are the bridges that span vast gulfs in time, space, misunderstanding and position. They are the most important gift we have to share, and the most precious gift we can receive.

I want to continue to share my story in between loads of laundry, hacking out a garden in my yard, changing diapers, nursing cold cups of coffee and walking the dog. I can’t guarantee I will post regularly, but I haven’t given up on this space. I want you to know your story is essential too even if it seems simple, unimportant, and poorly told - like mine. I’d love it if you would share with me.

Peace.