Kids

I should stop saying that I don't like kids. 

It's partly true in the same way saying I don't like chickens is true. 

I'm not particularly fond of children or chickens en masse. They are often loud, kind of smelly and slightly terrifying in a group, but I often find chickens and children wonderful mysteries to love and encounter as individuals. 

I say I don't like kids for several other reasons, besides some truth in the statement.

1. I like to push back in our culture that worships youth and tries to hang on to childhood for as long as possible. We tend to romanticize and idolize childhood and it leaves us with folks without boundaries who need to grow up. I don't do things for children that they can do for themselves, especially if they are demanding about it. I don't coddle or sweet talk children, but I try to respect who they are and where they are in their development.

2. I also like to rebel against some of the assumptions made about female pastors. Churches often put women in children or youth ministry and I don't want to be pigeonholed into those specialties. Luckily I've served small churches so I get to do a little bit of everything, including fixing toilets and boilers as well as hanging out with kids.

3. It sometimes gets me out of volunteering for things, like chaperoning the middle school dance, which it didn't get me out of doing this last weekend. 

It was actually a lovely gift to get to hang out and observe middle schoolers for a couple of hours at their first dance. There is so much awkwardness, drama, meanness, gentleness, joy and hormones. It was a bundle of raw humanity that I got to watch and occasionally intervene in their dramas. There were little beachballs all over and shockingly they started throwing them at each other instead of dancing. Nothing shows you care like whipping a beach ball at someone's head. 

One of my favorite kids from summer lunch was there and I had to remind him of who he was and how we behave a couple of times, especially as he had other kids in chokeholds. 

When he was getting really wound up I had him come sit by me and tell me some stories about the school year and life. It's easy to be perpetually angry with this kiddo and I've found giving him space to tell some stories helps us both get reoriented and be a little more human. And I think it's in that space we figure out how to love, not an idealized love or affection for who you want a person to be, but a moment of shared humanity. 

I don't love kids as an idea, but I do like to create safe spaces where they can reveal what is lovely or painful in their lives. Like all humanity, kids are not objects to adore, but complex mysteries we get to encounter and figure out how to be in relationship with.