Renewal and Redemption

I don’t know if you guys know this, but fifth graders are mean! Every time I walk into our fourth and fifth grade room I start to feel all my insecurities from fifth grade bubbling up. All of a sudden I’m worried about the way my hair looks and wondering why I don’t dress as well as this other little girl and I feel like everyone is judging me -- and these are just 10 year olds! I’m twice their age feeling intimated by them, and it’s awful. 

So a couple weeks ago we were low on volunteers and I got to lead a small group of fifth graders. Well..got to/had to..I don’t know which one. We were so low on volunteers that I ended up leading three tables of girls. I was feeling nervous and wondering how I would be able to have intentional conversations with such a large group of girls.

Here’s the thing about fifth grade girls: they’re cliquey. And at that age they all have such different personalities. So on one side we have girls with purses more expensive than any purse I own with their lip gloss in it and maybe their offering money since that’s really all a fifth grade girl has to put in a purse. On another side we have the quieter group, who have their own silly sense of humor that most girls don’t get. Then we have the sporty girls on the other side who are all on the same soccer and softball teams and whatever other sports are popular. And there’s a very clear division. 

That week we were learning about Esther and having courage in difficult or uncomfortable situations (which is funny considering how uncomfortable I was feeling). As I went in to talk with them I felt all my fifth grade fears coming back in. I hated Sunday school when I was in fifth grade. I grew up in a divorced home, so I lived with my mom during the week and visited my dad on the weekends. He lived over an hour away, so when I went to church I was with girls who I didn’t go to school with and I didn’t go to midweek Bible studies with. And they were school friends and sports friends and church friends and their parents were all friends so they had this special connection that I just wasn’t a part of. 

As I sat down with this group of 20 or so girls I asked what it would look like to be courageous in their own lives. My question was met with blank stares from a few and cliché answers from a few, so I started feeding them more specific questions. I asked “What would it look like to be courageous when a girl at school who’s different than you is sitting alone?” A couple of the girls gave the expected answer: “Go sit with her” but it was clear that there was no depth to that and they were just saying what I wanted to hear. Then a girl at one table quietly said “What if I’m the girl sitting alone?” After that a girl from a different table turned and said “Yeah and what if one day my friends like me and then the next day they don’t want to talk to me?” and then a girl from the third table turned around and said “I had this necklace that I really liked and then when I got to school my friends made fun of me and I don’t know why so now I don’t want to wear it.” 

As I listened to these girls share these similar stories I saw walls breaking down. Here these 20 girls realized that they were experiencing similar situations and similar pain in their lives. It wasn’t about their different interests anymore, it was about their shared experiences. And as I watched these completely different groups of girls connect I felt so much hope about what is happening at this church. The things that these girls are going through is real and it hurts. It’s no longer just crafts and games – it’s real and these moments that the girls experience in church and school are moments that will stay with them forever. I still remember what my fifth grade Sunday school experience was like. So I’m excited because I see walls coming down in our children’s rooms, and I am hopeful that when these girls are older they will look back on their time in Sunday school and remember how loved they felt by God through the way the girls treated them and the relationships they were able to build.

P.S. As I wrote this blog post I was overwhelmed with how good God has been to me. He took me,a girl who felt ignored and hurt at church as a 10 year old, and brought me into ministry where I can make a difference in the life of 5^th grade girls who may be feeling just like I did. I love that I get to be a part of their stories, a part of such an influential time in their lives. I am excited that I am able to use what was a tough time for me and turn it into something beautiful. My freshman year in college in Foundations of Ministry we read a book that said that our biggest ministries will come from our biggest hurts, and I am so grateful for that.