…offering a way for all to experince life, love, and the God of Grace”
Thats my job this summer, simply. To accept; to include; to make known the love of Christ. When I step back, I choke up with fears and anxiety, in no way shape or form do i feel able to minister to children about the grace of God, and then I breathe. I exhale my anxiety, I simply inhale, but in that breath I take in grace: the grace needed to live, move, breathe. The grace I need for this job on any given day, and the grace I need outside of this place.
This week lungs cried out for air, anxiety would catch my lungs, and hold them captive in the darkness of all my fears. I would look at the sun-kissed faces of eleven girls, pleading with Christ to enable them to feel his grace as it is woven throughout their stories. Then suddenly, all the while, I could step back and see God’s grace pushing me further and further towards the most abundant life: A life where I lay down every night perfectly content with all the mistakes of the day, all the joys, and all the “inbetweens”.
At the moment my life is one big “inbetween”, but this “inbetween” is the most abundant form of life. In May, I competed high school with my best friends by my side; I completed a phase of my life that was full of the good stuff, like nights spent with the dearest of friends, road trips to cities we didn’t know, sweet kisses from nervous boys, sheer joy from good company on the dance floor, community that breakfast food could create, strange happening that snowballed into jokes that bonded a wild bunch of girls together, the sheer amount of noise we could make in a place even makes my heart skip a beat as I type.
All of the sudden there was a swift transition into camp life, a life without those whimsical freedoms or friends. Responsibility swooped in; There were schedules to keep, boats to drive, knots to tie, kids to love and somehow by God’s grace I was ready. I wasn’t ready in any logical or technical way, actually I was the least qualified, and in all those empty spaces or inadequacies I saw God come and not only did he come and fill that empty space, he let it overflow. He gave me the ability to see how absolutely unnecessary I am for his service, but that I get the JOY to try, and try again, and mess up some more, learn, try again, probably mess up something new, and then try that all over again. I’ve abandoned the anxieties that accompany the job of ministry and allow God’s ministry to my own heart to be observing daily “thin moments” ; Shauna Niequiest, authuor of Cold Tangerines and Bittersweet, believes in thin places:
The places where the boundary between the divine world and the human world becomes almost nonexistent, and the two, divine and human, can for a moment, dance together uninterrupted. Some are physical places, and some aren’t places at all, but states of being or circumstances or season.
However, I’ve taken the personal right to make my own term, a thin moment: the smiles I see as girls bounce along the Tennessee River in the tube or the exasperated gasp of a camper as they climb wilderness hill for the first time or even the chaos of the GagaBall Pit
There are a lot of moments of heartache and pain I feel on any given day, thats the nature of my job, but I also know the fulfillment of Christ. I experience all these emotions, the beautiful range-the human range,so that I can relate to those around me. In the return from fourth of July weekend, I will begin some of my lasts, last smores on friday night, last pancake breakfasts, last canoe trip (see we do other things besides eat!!), and even last snuggles in the MegaBed. One chapter ends. One begins. I approach yet another, unavoidable, “inbetween”. I begin to prepare for the next chapter, we can title it WorldRace, Or “No I’m not going on the Amazing RAce, Im going on the World Race” or Kisses from Lily or really whatever floats your boat; No matter the Chapter title, the chapter is happening.
The “inbetweens” hit , but this time its my heart, I’m excited and oh so nervous. I’m excited for the culture shock, the hard work, the strange critters that I will get to snack on, the love that I will come to know, the language I will attempt to speak, the tent i’ll rest my head in at night, the girls I will live life with for the next nine months, but in all this anticipation the fears creep in. My best friends are making new friends, they are learning about life in a whole different way than I am, not that either one is more valid than the other, but our experiences will undoubtedly differ. They’ll be spending time in the library or in chapter or at football games. Theres a fear that I will become an irrelevant person in their life, our experiences creating this unbridged gap. The more and more I fear, the more I know I MUST go, because when we step into fear, we find faith, and in that faith is the unimaginable abundant life.
