You're Beautiful

It's taken me days to put my thoughts in order, but I wanted to tell you all about the wonderful week I spent with the Grace Community Church Youth Group last week. Surprisingly (clearly the hand of God was at work), I received a called from our youth pastor, Josh, just a few days before the trip asking if I would like to chaperone. Blessed by the freedom of unlimited time and travel this summer, I seized the opportunity and drove down to Nashville once again a few days later.

(Max the Matrix and I are really ramping up the miles these days!)

I got to spend that Sunday with my favorite church pew families, watching a magnificent storm pass through the giant window behind the altar. After church, we loaded the bus and headed off to join several other churches at Crossings Camp in Hardin, KY at Jonathan Creek.

Let me tell you...our youth group is FANTASTIC. I mean, talk about a relatively flawless trip. The bus was even quiet on the 2 hour drive - unreal!

We spent the week living together in an older building at Jonathan Creek (hey, mold in the vents). I shared a room with the older high school girls: Kathleen, Madelyn, Alyssa, and Bethany - four sweet young women who are very dear to my heart. With 46 of us on one hallway, we had very close contact with everyone throughout the week!

The week was chock full of activities and quality time with almost 300 other youth from around the Mid-South. The kids had worship, large group, and small group Bible studies in the morning. The afternoons were threefold: time with just our youth group, POIs (activities the youth chose ahead of time, like tubing, zip lining, arts&crafts, kayaking, messy games, etc), and time at the Blob Lake. In the evenings, we had a long worship and large group Bible study time and free time until lights out at 11:30 (way past my bedtime!). All the time in between was filled with me gulping down unlimited sweet tea in the cafeteria and eating delicious American food (as I was often reminded by these snarky youth, "it's not that good - you've just been living in Namibia.").

Throughout the week, the youth got to dive into the Gospel and study our sin and God's grace, led by camp pastor . Not surprisingly, the adults learned a lot as well and were blessed with ample free time to reflect ourselves and have great conversations with the youth.

I am incredibly encouraged by the youth at Grace. Here are few examples of things that made me smile throughout the week:
- Asking them bold questions about what they were learning and wrestling with at camp, and having them take the time to think and honestly respond with what's on their hearts.
- Escaping with the high school girls for milkshakes at Belew's and singing Taylor Swift loudly on the car ride back.

Our sweet high school girls

- Highs, Lows, and Hard Questions with my girls every night, and having them open their hearts and lives to each other.
- Getting to know our young men better and hearing them share what's on their hearts, pray out loud, and grow as Christian men.
- Watching our youth worship and pray every night.
- Their courage in trying really new activities, like climbing, zip lining, tubing, and blobbing - some for the first time.
- Youth wrestling with being called to ministry and what that will look like in their lives and post-high school decisions.
- Hearing them share their passions and burdens - this year, Crossings strongly emphasized identifying our passions and our burdens and using them to serve our communities and the world.
- Having a group of adults and high schoolers gather to pray over a dear friend of mine and the girl she mentors who was in a horrible accident...watching them gather around a Sister in Christ that they don't even know and actively pray for and ask about her in the days to come.
- Living life alongside these youth and getting a glimpse into their lives - the things they struggle with, the decisions they have to make, their lives outside of youth group.
- Having a bunch of girls let go of their teenage shells and follow my outrageous idea to synchronize swim in the Blob Lake and make fools of ourselves - and then beg to do it every day thereafter.
- Standing in awe and gratefulness for what our great God is doing in each of these youth's hearts as they worshipped deeply to Phil Wickham's "You're Beautiful" on the last night.

Every conversation that week was so sprinkled with the grace of God and I could not feel more privileged to have lived life alongside these dear Grace friends - new and old - for a week. It makes me so excited to return to Nashville and see them every Sunday.

Grace Youth 2011