and then there was a EYC building...

It's amazing to me how quickly life can progress, It's been a year since I moved here. I can hardly remember my first Sunday at Church of Our Saviour because it was so chaotic, it seemed like a million names, faces, and things to remember. I remember a few things...

Kahtra Kayton's necklace (two Christian fish swimming together) which later turned out to mean alot to me since it is the symbol of my community Bible study, the thing that holds my week (and sometimes life and faith) together.

I remember I wore a stripped blue skirt with a red shirt and brown cardigan.

I remember I was SCARED and so glad that Jay was with me the whole time.

The next week was our church picnic which we just had AGAIN this Sunday (the big ONE YEAR mark for my ministry here). At our last church picnic I had the kids meet early to fill water balloons, I struggled to remember their faces, their schools, their names.

And here I am
one
year
later
and their names roll off of my tounge without a thought. I even know them well enough to scold them when they try to hide from playing games. I think they find it funny when I scold them but I'll do it anyway. And in the distance as I gathered the kids, the families, the newbies, I saw this building that we had been working on all weekend. Our new youth space.

I thought I knew what I was getting into when I took this job, but like most adventures, I had no clue. I had no clue that a year from my start we would be moving into a HUGE warehouse just for youth. I had no idea that Jay and my dinner conversations would center around how so-and-so are doing this week at college or who was in what Fall sports. I had no idea that my life would function like this. I didn't know what jumping into this really meant, I didn't know that my phone would get so many text messages in a year, many of them starting with "don't be mad" or "I know it's late but..."

I didn't know I could fall deeper in love with Christ, or that his spirit could live through me so practically daily. I never knew the prayers I would pray to myself while sitting at breakfast with awesome kids or while sitting in my office with someone in pain.

I had no clue that this is what youth ministry would look like. I think if I did, I may not have taken the job because from the outside it looks crazy, but from the inside it feels right.

There are many youth ministers out there right now who would give up almost anything for the amazing space we are moving into this month. I am beyond blessed by this building, but I know that those walls will only shelter us from weather and that what lies within them is bigger, better, and far more powerful. A community of Christ lovers... and I have no clue what is next.

school supplies

One of my favorite things in the universe is shopping for school supplies. Not only do I love shopping for them, I love labeling them, covering my books, and organizing my backpack. I love perfectly sharpened pencils and markers where the tips are not yet smashed. I love the way when you open up a box of crayons all of the colors are still perfectly ordered.

I always wanted my mom to buy me the 64 pack with the sharpener on the back, but I always got the 32 instead. She was right, I never did use those 'extra' colors but there is just something about that big box that gets my heart pumping. My mom used to cover by books with brown paper bags (because I never liked the simple to use covers) and in her most perfect mom handwriting write the subject on the spine. To me shopping for school supplies was the most exciting thing to happen all summer. It is quite amazing then that I cried the first day of school. Not just in elementary school but in middle school and even in high school. As I got older I hid my anxiety, I no longer cried in front of my new classroom but often in a bathroom stall somewhere in the back of campus. Ridiculous, I would think to myself you're 15 years old (or 16 or 17) this is the same school, the same people, even some of the same teachers. I don't know why the first day was always so hard for me but inevitably I would cry.

Now as I look back on all of those years I see myself with much more perspective and tenderness and with much less judgement. I see a girl who was so worried about perfect crayons, and pencils, and books, about perfect grades, and friends, and appearances. I built so much up to what each year would hold for me that I would BURST, literally, into tears.

It's amazing the pressure we put on ourselves to be perfect, if not in all ways than in some.

My ministry is full of perfect kids. (these are just a few of many!)

I am constantly in awe of the lives they live. The things that the accomplish. I've never seen their school supplies. I don't know what their books are covered with. But I do know the greatness each of them embodies. I find myself often praying that THEY see their own greatness. I am blessed to share my life with these amazing creations of God. Sometimes I know that it is them crying in the bathroom stall. Sometimes I know that they are so worried about

perfect grades

friends

appearances

that it is easy to forget that they are

'fearfully and wonderfully made' {psalm 139:14}

Last night as I was making dinner I heard a commercial on TV for school supplies, it made me a little envious but also made my stomach clench in that first-day-of-school-holding-back-tears sort of way. And then I thought of them. I thought of all that is going on in their homes right now.

I thought of my precious 5th graders that are getting ready to start middle school. I thought of the fears that they have about changing classrooms, and new friends, and what being not a teenager but not a child anymore means.

And I thought of my darling 8th graders who are trying to figure out how this high school thing works, how to fit in where they want to fit in, and how to make the right first step into the new world that ends in college and being an adult.

And finally I thought of my seniors, who are graduated. Who I got to tube the James with this week. Who are becoming more my peers than my youth. Who are leaving on the biggest, most exciting, scariest adventure yet.

and I remembered that all them are

'fearfully and wonderfully made' {psalm 139:14}

and today I hope that they take it easy on themselves. That they trust that God has placed all of them, exactly where they are meant to be, and they are enough, just as they are, without a 64 pack of crayons or perfect grades.