Giving Up and Letting Go

Washington DC 2013 – The Final Post (for now)

As one might expect, by mid-week I get tired and it is not the easiest thing for me to continue to post updates one each day. Let me assure all my readers that we all had a good week and made it back to the great state of Rhode Island in one piece.

For the rest of the week we taught more, played games, tried to manage chaos, and enjoyed some fun/silly time as a group. One of the pleasures of going on these trips is to see the team come together as a team. On Friday I encouraged the folks doing construction and our two cooks to take half a day and to go and see the sights. This meant the seven of us left were responsible for cooking and cleaning up from supper. If it were Monday we would not have been able to do this; we just were not clicking as a group. Yet on Friday we were like a well-oiled machine cooking hamburgers, hot dogs, serving potato salad, and keeping things moving. We may have even been too well-oiled because I think some of the oil slipped into the beans and is now churning in the stomachs of children.

On Thursday one of the 12 year old kids we were with asked me if we were being paid to be there. I told her no.

Her: “So this is your vacation?”

Me: “For many of us it is?”

Her: “Why would you do that?”

That is a great question. To be honest, it was not my vacation. I think that is one of the double-sided blessings of being a pastor. It is part of my calling to organize and facilitate such trips. I am happy to do that and see the value in these adventures. Yet do I understand what it means to give up time to go and serve?

When I take my actual vacation this summer (aside from my family-obligated trips) I am going to run off into the woods and hide away for five days or so. There is a selfish nature to this, and I own that. My profession calls me to give in a relational way, to be present for people and I am glad to do this. Yet there are times when I do need to run away, which means I will not understand what it means to give up a week of my personal time. In many ways people on the team have given more that I did.

By the last day three of the youth were beginning to ask if they could stay another week. They wanted to continue to work with the campers and were worried because there were not any other churches scheduled to help out for the rest of the summer. This was a good thing to hear. The youth did not want to stay because they loved the D.C. “experience,” but because they were beginning to build a bond with the children. They were beginning to understand and appreciate the children and were worried about them.

One of the difficult things about such trips is letting go when it is time to go. We put time and energy into relationships and now we are supposed to hope that others will continue to honor the relationships and trust that we have worked to cultivate. It is a question of trust. It is a question of trusting whether or not God is a part of the work we are doing. Actually it is a question of trusting that we are a part of the work that God is doing. Do we trust that we are a part of something bigger that just our team and that God is working with everyone who is involved? Can we let go and trust that the rest of the week will go well and the children at the camp will be better for having gone?

This is why we have video games, so we can return to our lives, dive into the pixels and binary code, and forget all that we previously did. It is an absurd kind of trust but one that is practiced daily (it is also a form of neglect, but lets not go there today).