I have had lots of friends asking, “So how did the talks go?” since I have been back from speaking at Summer Camp this weekend. I have two words to describe this weekend:

1) Indescribable.

2) Hades.

Let me start with point two:

Yes, this is the one of the coolest days. The heat of the day is 127…and it’s 113 at night. Basically, you lay on top of your sleeping bag and try not to be miserably drowning in your own sweat until sleep over takes you.

Ok, onto the first point, which is obviously the better of the two.

Have you ever had a moment when you realize that you just stumbled upon something bigger than yourself? Talking to these kids this weekend was an experience that could be described as just a glimpse of the massive story that God is writing. It was for all intensive purposes…chilling.

I was sitting in church the weekend before when I got the inspiration for what I wanted to talk on. I had been praying for days, “God what do you want to tell these kids? Because I really don’t have much to say and it would be really embarrassing to just stand up there for four days.” Well, inspiration came like a flood.  Sitting there in the midst of a service, my mind began spinning, and I started asking complete strangers for a pen before I drowned in my own thoughts. I scribbled on bulletins – my own and other people’s as I desperately grabbed whatever I could get my hands on.

Flash forward to a few days later where I was flushing out the wire frame of my talk. I seriously looked psychotic. I think my roommate walked in one day to find my computer on, music blaring, books open, papers everywhere, notes scratched all over the place, and me – desperately scribbling on our sliding glass doors with dry erase marker. I’ve learned through this experience that I am a visual person, and I need to be able to see the entire thing…so I quickly moved from computer to small whiteboard, to entire sliding glass doors. Clearly it was like a scene from A Beautiful Mind.

It was only after several hours of this creative flow and filling my entire windows that I had to step back and take a breath. Seeing the writing fill both doors, I just stood there and tears filled my eyes. It hit me that this was not a story and a small talk for one weekend. This was something that God had been writing for years and years and years. Seeing it all there together, the joys, the struggles, the pain,  the anger, the hope…it all made so much sense. God was big. God was really big. And God was in charge.  God had been in charge. And had known of this moment for so much time. And I had blindly struggled through pissed and frustrated, and stumbled into this awe of realization that my story was not random. It had been there the whole time.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Getting to camp I was excited. I knew I was equip with a talk that was going to grand slam these kids. I knew because the content that had filled my sliders was well beyond my own brain’s capacity. But here is the funny thing – as I began the talks, it was incredibly harder than I thought it was going to be.  The second talk that I did was on anger and abandonment. I told the kids about parts of my story that contained pain, injustice, and the moments where I had seriously questioned God’s deity and character.

Walking out of that talk, I felt like my words had left my mouth and hit the ground like an anvil. No one had said a word to me upon finishing. I walked right out the back door and into the dark 113 degree night. Tears pressed my eyes.

“What the hell God? You brought me all the way out here to be hot and uncomfortable and vulnerable in front of all these kids – and they stare at me like I’m in idiot. Are you kidding me? Why did you bring me here? To hear the sound of my own voice? Does this even matter?”

Let me flash forward several days. Stories began pouring out about the kids at the camp. Stories of hurt, physical abuse, sexual abuse, drug abuse,  abandonment, anger, and pain. And maybe not all the kids were running up to me to tell me what was going on in their hearts and minds, but their leaders began giving me an idea of where they were at. And as story after story after story of how these kids were just like I had been.  They are  experiencing things that I experienced when I was there age, and grappling with the very same ideas that I was smashing with each talk.

There was no epic conclusion. I didn’t have ever single kid come up at the last alter call and proclaim that they loved my friend “Jesus the Hippie” and wanted to follow God everywhere. But the sound of their stories resounded in my heart. LOUD.  Their stories pounded impact into my mind because they showed me the grandiose nature of God. A few of the leaders told me that they were blown away at the weekend. I agreed with them. I was blown away too. And not at my speaking ability. I was blown away at God’s ability to catch me up in a story that is bigger than myself.

In light of all of this I can just say this, “Thank you God, for letting me play in your symphony even though all I saw was random notes.”