a good walk down memory lane

take a look back to take a better step forward

REEL joy

thanks so much for your prayers and encouragement =) I have been strengthened by your words and prayers. Things are better, work is chaotic, the office feels like it's going to fall apart, but it's ok. God is with me. I've been goign to youth group every other week, and it's been a challenge (as i wrote about previously...). please do pray for me, i need help just to come out of my shell and be who i am. the leadership for the youth group met tonight, and it was really encouraging to share our ideas, vision, how the kids have been doing, how to get the kids to simmer down and focus. i'm glad for what God is doing.

I volunteered to write an article for Redeemer Community Partnerships about the REEL joy project. The article is due this Friday and this is one of my drafts. If you have any comments, edits, thoughts, please do comment, this is a work in progress. One request, please be gentle with me, it is a very vulnerable act to share my writing with people. I have bolded and starred my questions that I would appreciate some input about. Thanks for your help friends!

Chaos. Potential. Energy. Discipline. Rinse, repeat and hang dry. These are the words that come to my mind as I reflect over the month long project that the youth group at church of the Redeemer did in partnership with Street Lamp Studios.

            I am currently a second year intern with Servant Partners, and conveniently enough, the tenant of one of the leaders of Street Lamp Studios.  I was one of the many adults who helped bring REEL JOY to fruition.

            The project started out with an amazing turn out; almost 30 youth came out for this project. Teenagers have a lot of energy, and when you combine that with 8-10 adults who may or may not know exactly what they’re doing, and a space that’s really not big enough for all that energy, it quickly adds up to chaos! I don’t think I had ever realized before that sometimes you need more space for there to be silence.

I love Adventures Ahead, it is a place where many good things happen.  It is a place where children work to improve their reading, writing and comprehension; a place where they learn better study habits and connect with adults who want to mentor them and be a positive influence in their lives.  But when you try and facilitate four creative films, with 20-30 teenagers, there are going to be some who get short-changed. One group’s meeting area was in the office of Adventures Ahead. It’s a challenge to get a group of teenagers to sit still and concentrate under the best of conditions. But to try and get them to focus on creating a story with a beginning, middle and an end, while they sit in the middle of all the foot traffic is too much to expect.  There is so much potential here.

You must picture this group of rising stars; they were a group with an array of personalities: There were the clowns, ring-leaders, church folk, non-church folk, space cadets, trouble makers; youth willing to put themselves out there and those that weren’t quite there yet. A good game of charades would prove to reveal who would tend towards which end of the spectrum.

            Young people want to be famous, and they want to produce something that will be seen by the world, and this is made possible by the internet. This was a great way to connect with the youth because in this generation anyone and everybody can become a star, the catch is what these young people will become a star for. There are plenty of people: men, women, young and old who will submit themselves to any type of shame to get their piece of the world’s attention.  But this kind of fame that I speak of comes so easily and there were many moments along the way that some teenagers wanted to give up and peace out. 

On the night of REEL JOY, Jenny Hall spoke about how God loves these young people, and that’s why many of us chose to invest and participate in this project.  There is a desire in many of us, I believe, to communicate to these young people, to discipline your energy and potential because your participation and presence is needed. You are irreplaceable. I know that the world, myself included, teachers and people in authority may tell you otherwise. Our actions may say, “You don’t matter or you’re a danger, a nuisance, a problem to be solved”. I see this, and want to say, I’m sorry, for the things that I have said through my look, my tone, my attitude, please forgive me. Let us speak to this generation the word that they are each important, valued, children of God.

            I was very impressed with the thoughts and ideas of the young people in my group.  They wanted their main character to demonstrate the realities of becoming addicted to drugs; a story that would enfold to show this person losing sight of the good in life, like friends, playing in a band, God. This character would face the reality that they really needed God. They wanted the character to learn about the forgiveness and love of God. All of these ideas originated from the group, not from the other facilitator or myself. This was the narrative that they wanted to see unfold.

            I don’t know about you, but sometimes it is a struggle to see the potential in others, the city and in myself. There are times when it feels so much easier to give into hopelessness and despair over the broken state of affairs in Los Angeles.  But here, in this instance, I was reminded of God’s love, goodness and redemptive plan for all, for you and me. I was reminded that though these people may be young, but many have experienced suffering that I do not know. They too, want and long for things to be different for this life, life made whole by God.

            Hope.

            Hope for the families in the inner city. I’ve heard and seen the broken families, where there’s too often only one parent, and many children to be loved, fed, educated and clothed. Too little money to pay the bills. These are demands that pull and stretch a person to the brink of being of being able to keep it together for themselves and for their children.  If a woman has to care for her family herself, she can’t be there for her children as much as she would like, she has to make the choice between working and being available to her children as much as she would want, she has to make the choice between working and being there for them and to see them develop, grow and learn.  But what happens if they don’t have what they need to get through the day? Every mouth needs to be fed, every body clothed. So it has been difficult to connect with the parents of the youth that our church ministers to.

            On the day of filming, I went to pick up three young ladies from their new house in Long Beach. As I entered the house, I was overwhelmed at the number of children who resided in that house. I didn’t know if they were all siblings or friends, or distant relatives, but there were many children in that house and only one mom. I was sad to know that my assumption of her being a single mom was probably correct. She is a lovely woman, with an open face and a great love for her children, but so many children to care for and probably not enough time and energy for just one woman to carry. 

            Her daughter gets up on stage the night the REEL JOY movies were unveiled; stands and raises her hands to get the crowd to chant her name. Her glowing smile shows her pleasure at wielding her power over the crowd. She carries herself with a confidence and poise that can’t be easily taught. She puts her hand to her ear to better accentuate the crowd chanting her name and says, “I’ve always wanted to do that”. She stands and reads the scripture about joy, grabs the microphone and flashes a huge smile and a wink, gives her sincere thanks to her mother for everything that she’s done and says, “I love you Mom!”

            And there sitting in the audience to receive that joy is her mother, with all of her 8 children. A testimony to how despite the fact that there are too many stories of parents who aren’t there, or who are but don’t care, that there’s hope. There’s hope in the example of this teenager’s mom, who packed up the car with all eight of her children to come see her daughter’s grand debut.

            So this joy is mine, to have been a piece in this picture and to be shown the hope and joy of the Lord, which are mine and yours to share in. **Do you think I should fill out the conclusion, or is this ending enough?**

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