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My librarian friend texted me asking for book recommendations on mentoring. I had a couple, and I asked Matt his ideas, but he agreed most mentoring learning doesn’t come from books. It’s a learned skill life on life as you encouraged the life development in others. I offered some suggestions to Heather, but I’ve also signed up for the women’s mentoring event at my church in two weeks time which falls on the same day I’m hoping to fill a van load of leaders and youth to go plant native plants at the park where Easter Camp happens annually. Whoever ends up in the van will have a life on life mentoring experience, but it won’t be based on book learning.

This Saturday I had a two hour call with one of my favourite humans who happens to call me her mentor. She had texted me last weekend when I was on my retreat to keep me posted on some major life events. When we got to catch up, she asked me about life and ministry and how I was doing emotionally with celebrating other people’s healings while waiting for my own. This kid is quality. She was also temporarily deflecting, but then got right to the heart of the two days she spent in tears at the end of last week and her learning to have a healthy relationship with emotions. We also talked about hard stuff like how to have theologically nuanced positions in a cancel culture world.

I’d had a similar conversation with a handful of my young people at camp last weekend.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned more times than necessary that I don’t enjoy the actual camp part of camp, but it’s so incredibly worth it for the kind of conversations and picnic table moments I was able to have in roughly 48 hours with five of my young leaders.

After youth group last Friday, I loaded up into a van with one other leader and five bright young high schoolers brimming with leadership skills and eager to learn about God and how to grow.

We showed up a couple hours after the other two youth groups who are part of the CCCNZ network who were also participating in this particular camp for developing young leaders. I knew a couple of the other leaders, and I’d seen Craig’s name on CCCNZ youth related emails and posts online. Craig is a really solid Jesus follower who has two full tattoo sleeves and introduced himself to me by saying, “I need to let you know you’re going to hell because you have tattoos,” so obviously we have the same sense of humour. What a gift to listen to Craig share about the responsibilities of Christian leadership alongside Matt, Lance, and Emma’s talks about other important leadership topics.

The educator in me was overjoyed when Emma asked the table groups to write down characteristics of God, and I heard the RYC girls behind me whispering, “What was that passage Laura used at youth group last night that was God describing himself? It was somewhere in Exodus.” The Jesus follower passionate about discipleship in me was even more elated to listen to them talk about these characteristics of God in their own words and how we should learn about this awesome God who loves us and especially practice listening to him. There were two “solo time” sessions in the weekend where we spread out across the camp to just listen to God after Emma gave some of the exact points I’ve been repeating to youth in various contexts. (Reinforcement of solid content was another educator win for me.)

One of the cool features of this camp is to mix up the youth group members into different small groups for discussion after the talks. I was able to hear from two of my youth alongside three other young people who had come, and I loved hearing them discuss different strategies for motivating people to follow Jesus and how they wanted to have genuine relationships with God themselves and encourage authenticity in peers. While there was a lot of value in the mixed groups, we also had a half hour slot for our youth group to meet together after Matt’s talk on the pitfalls of leadership on Saturday night. Matt stuck around with our group to chat for the first bit, but he took off at a reasonable hour while the rest of us kept talking about the various struggles these young people face as they choose to follow Jesus in a world that wants to sell them a life of less.

We had an eclectic group, and I was surprised with how vulnerable and open they were with each other in that short span of time. That camp vibe really does something for you – it’s a picnic table effect. That discussion turned into a holy moment as we wrapped up at lights out time by praying for each other. Particularly, we prayed for knee pain and headaches and my physical healing. The next morning at breakfast, I was overjoyed to hear that the other two people who we’d prayed over together both woke up without the pain they’d had for the past several days. During Sunday’s solo time, I sat at the same picnic table I’d found the day before and stared at the trees while I reflected on some Psalms and sat in the presence of God. Near the end of the hour, one of my youth came up to me with a bold request.

“Can I pray for you?”

You all know I don’t turn that down. But I really want to sit with this young man’s bravery for a minute. He chatted with me for a bit, we prayed, and then he said he had to ask something else that was more scary. “Could you try standing up?” You guys, the faith of this young man is so beautiful, and I wish I could convey to you through the internet the significance of that moment for not only his faith journey, but mine, and not only that but for the growth of the global church shown by this simple sentence. I don’t know what has kept me in the wheelchair for so long, but I know it was important that this young man had the opportunity to ask an incredibly bold question in the name of Jesus, to expect the Holy Spirit to show up, and to know the resurrection power of God is still present and active in our world today.

My conversation with Zoë was really beautiful because she’s one of the people who will ask the hard questions that dig into the emotions of inviting the Holy Spirit to heal me and see other people get healed instead. It’s not easy to be in this position, and I honestly struggled through this week. I had a handful of moments that were just annoying – painful, time consuming, or exhausting – that were entirely disability related. Life would be so different if my frustrations were exhausting because I was exerting myself with an able body. Instead, I know my limits are shorter than what a healthy body would be. I’m forced to change my sheets a couple extra times in the week, to take a longer route because the sidewalks don’t have a ramp up or down to cross where is most convenient. Little things can add up, and they also can crop up unexpectedly. I do my best to plan for those extra time needs, but sometimes an extra shower I didn’t account for becomes necessary. That’s the life I live. I try not to cry about it, but a couple tears came out today as I was chatting with Alicia in the middle of writing this post.

Sure I’m allowed to feel my feelings, but I also personality-wise am a firm believer that tears over my disability are a waste of time because I can’t change this. The only thing that can change my circumstance is a supernatural intervention – alongside some incremental possible progress that comes with hard and focused determination (which is hindered by tears).

“But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope,” Jeremiah writes in my favourite verse. Christy has read from Lamentations at a couple church or staff things recently as she’s chosen a passage in chapter three as her verse for the year. I love hearing those words of hope in the midst of grief read aloud. When I was in high school, I spent painstaking hours writing out Lamentations 3 in silver puff paint on black cloth with the intent of hanging the long panel on my closet door. While I never finished the hanging part of the project, the writing out of the passage was formational in my concept and understanding of biblical hope. A few verses after introducing reasons for hope, Jeremiah writes, “though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love.”

The beautiful life I live has more grief than most people experience, but I also have seen reason for hope in greater quantities than average. As I sat reflecting with my friend Emma earlier this week, I somehow have been blessed with being the person people see God at work in. I am the one who gets to receive prayer as God grows their faith in asking for the miraculous. After the talk at youth group last Friday, one of my young people came up and asked me if she could pray for me. She’s not grown up in a Christian home or had a strong faith background, but she’s been coming along and fully engaged in our youth group. She told me she’d wanted to pray for me the week we did healing prayer time a few weeks back but hadn’t had enough courage at the time. I was so blessed by her bravery to come up to me by herself and pray in her heart while she sat next to me. If I’d been miraculously healed the week before, this precious child of God wouldn’t have had that faith building experience. How humbling.

I don’t know who else is left to join into this story, but I’m hopeful we’re reaching the fullness of God’s timing. My feet are in a lot more pain than usual, and I hate complaining about it. I’d rather just not be in pain.

To everyone who has prayed for me faithfully over the past years, thank you. What an absolute gift. For those who have yet to join, I offer this gift to you to pray for me and be a part of what God is doing. Ready or not, it’s going to be awesome to see God get the glory.