when kids hurt 3

You can read the newest edition of my thoughts on When Kids Hurt here.

I don't know about you, but when I feel lonely and stressed, I make bad decisions, am a terrible driver, and usually try to compensate for these feelings with chocolate and treadmill abuse (on a rotating basis). Youth have underdeveloped coping skills. Their solution to loneliness is that which is provided for them in the media: sex and attention.

sometimes, i write to myself.

I write a weekly message to the leaders in our Sunday School program at church. It connects to the weekly theme and story. More often than not, I write it to myself. I write it to pick my melted self off of the floor and to tell myself that there is greater, deeper, better hope.

Here's this week's, based on Joshua 3:1-4:24 where the Israelites cross the Jordan River into Canaan:

Thanksgiving is a verb, an action, a movement. It’s more than a day. Certainly, we get together and partake in whatever family or friends traditions we have. Some eat Chinese food, some watch 2948 hours of football, some have pie making competitions (I’m coming to your house). Yet, at the core, our activities are centered on things that we are thankful for. This can be difficult at the end of a year filled with lost jobs, sick friends, lost sanity, and a whole lot of rain that just seems to aggravate the malaise.
Our young people aren’t oblivious to these troubles. They know when the adults in their life are hurting. They know when we are wandering around in a proverbial desert waiting for God to show us the river to cross. God acted mightily in the lives of Joshua and the Israelites. He dammed up a river and they walked across. Finally, their wandering was coming to a miraculous end. Tomorrow, when we wake up, this life will not change. And yet our response can change. We can look forward in life at the malaise and see the miraculous promise in the end. We can see forgiveness, healing and meaning in Christ. Our joy is independent of our sorrow and circumstance. For that we give thanks and build our 12 stone altars.

me rayo: nuanced sense of humor required for reading

I'm not sure what it is, but every time someone talks about social media on a social media device/tool/network I giggle (meta-references crack me up because I am a dork). And I gag.

There is an expression in Spanish: rayarse.* It means to draw lines on one's self or to be so bored out of your mind that there is nothing left to do than draw lines on yourself. Or to be so egomanical that you are staring at your navel for fun. Or to plain go crazy.

That's what talking about twitter on twitter does for me. And blogging. And facebook. Me rayo.

I think the only thing worse than self-conscious meta-referencing is name dropping, which is kind of what social media is about. Which is probably why it makes me gag and want to become a Luddite.

And that is why this post ends here. Me rayo.

*Last I heard it was in Spain. Ten years ago. It may have been exclusively used by my six friends. I've never heard anyone else use it, but I haven't been paying attention either. Google translator says it means streaking. This totally cracks me up because maturity is my strong suit.

nightmared

You wake wanting to scream, but somehow you don't.

You lay in silence, a bit awed at the exhaustion from running through unknown European back alleys.

You stare blankly, upwardly, afraid that the person you grieved has actually passed.

You toss, scanning quickly the darker corners of your room, ensuring that the blackened silhouette is just a lamp.

And then you wait for the nightmare to become real or to reveal itself as less than. Sometimes wide-eyed. Sometimes in dreams.

the birthday dance

I've mentioned salsa dancing here before and I suppose it is only fair that eventually I should post a video of said dancing. It is four and a half minutes of great facial expressions, silly "flamenco fingers," and a moment at the end when I fall off of the screen. You can fast forward to that part (around the 4:00 mark) without hurting my feelings a bit.

This is what is known as the birthday dance. I was nauseous for about thirty minutes after it was over. You can see why from the start.

MVI 1475 from alaina kleinbeck on Vimeo.

girls and chocolate chips. theory confirmed.

Don't get between a girl and her chocolate chips:

when you get full-on sick on a youth event and would rather die than lift a finger

This summer, I became terribly ill while on a youth servant event. The whole nine yards: Fever. Cough. Nose running at a sprinting pace. It was a glorious reenactment of every NyQuil commercial ever made.

My first instinct at the sight of the 100.2 degree fever (low, but still alarming in the HOLY GUACA I'M SICK kind of way) was HOLY GUACA I'M SICK. PANIC. This was absurd, you can't really panic appropriately when you feel like opening up your sinus system with a wrecking ball without anesthetics just so that you can feel something again.

I texted my trusty coworker a PANIC I'M SIIIIIICCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKK message. He reminded me that PANIC was stupid and idiotic in kinder, gentler words and that I'd already prepared for this.

I have? Oh yeah, I have.

About three years ago, my grandma had a stroke in the middle of a youth retreat and I was a wreck. I couldn't function because I was so distracted by wanting to be with my family. I left the retreat to be with my family. It was the right thing to do and I was able to do it because I had leaders there, equipped and ready to rumble at a moment's notice. Since that awful experience of leaving a retreat to be with my family, I have always prepared my leaders to be ready to lead should I fall ill--mentally, physically, or otherwise.

Here's how I prepare them:

1. Appoint a leader. In conversations with my leaders, I seek out someone to be the team leader if I become unable. This person has no special responsibilities in normal circumstances. They are the Vice President of the trip. I meet with them beforehand to go over all of the special contract, medical, transportation, blahdibbityblah information. The team knows that this person will make all final calls in my absence.
2. Organize your stuff. I have a box that has copies of everything: Med forms, contracts, bible study guides, pizzeria phone numbers. Everything is filed and marked. Bozo the Clown could find out how much pizza to order, what kind and at what time.
   
3. Teach your team. I meet with my leaders and tell them everything about the bible studies and campfire worships. They know what I am going to say and when. They hear it from me, they have my notes, my guide, my sidenotes. They know the heart of what we are studying and are equipped to lead it.
   
4. Be okay. Be okay with not being in charge. Be okay with the kids laughing about the bad guitar-playing at campfire. Be okay with not getting to canoe and clean up the lake. Be okay with knowing where you need to be (in bed or with your family). Be okay with letting your youth bring you tylenol and bottles of water. Be okay with yelling at them to wash their hands at a pipsqueak tone. Be okay with it. You can't change it and there's a lesson in giving up control in there somewhere.
   

Here endeth our youth ministry lesson of the day.

Tomorrow: back to nonsensical rambling!

rules by which all must abide. or the world just might collapse and it will be all your fault.

In bible study last night, we had a good laugh about the behavioral rules that we create to make sense of the world. These sorts of rules tend to become unspoken and ridiculously cumbersome expectations for the behavior of others. Frankly, there's a humorous amount of absurdity in the rules we create for others.

Here are a few that I have observed in myself or that friends have shared as theirs:

1. Don't cut me off on the highway. Or cruise in the left lane. Because that is dangerous. And I will ride up on your big booty bumper like a smooth criminal until you stop. Jerk.
2. Don't bounce around in front of me at a standing room only concert. How dare you enjoy music through movement.
3. Don't breathe loudly. No one wants to know that you are alive and breathing.
   
4. Don't behave irrationally. Don't think irrationally. Don't talk while feeling irrational. Don't ever be irrational around me. I don't care if it's irrational to expect it. Don't do it.
   
5. Don't make rules about what other people can or cannot do.
   

What would you add to the list?