Montreat 2015

I heard someone say last week that one of the great things about Montreat is that every year youth conference is different, a brand new experience; yet somehow it also feels just the same as always, so familiar, and known. It's the most true sentence I've heard in a while.

This year was just lovely for me up there. It's the third year in a row I have gone, so that familiar thing is totally real for me now. Just driving into the gate and climbing up the million steps to the top floor of the inn, or hiking down the path by the lake to go to church or my small group, it all makes me feel warm and homey and happy.

This was Anneliese's first year to go be a clubbie, and she did just great. It amazes me how quickly she makes friends and finds delight in new people. She loved her club kids and her counselors and swimming and singing new songs and her group even got to go do the most! fun! activity! ever! which was... walking to a field by the main entrance road, and waving to people driving in. They made it very official and called them the Montreat Wavers (listed on their official schedule) and I almost fell over laughing but she delighted in it, so, okay.

(Isn't that exactly the kind of thing this child would delight in? I mean.)

The first few days really pushed her limits on exhaustion and tears and so much walking, but she adjusted and by the end of the week she was an old pro, save the miserable window between her nap (when I was in my daily afternoon meeting of small group leaders) and our dinner (scooting into the dining room in the last opening minutes, so to maximize her rest time), when she was hella crabby. But! Other than that! Easy! Great first week of Montreat!

I think I have decided that Montreat is really good for the kids. I mean, not that that's a novel idea; it hit me the first year with just Nathan how good it was for him to be a bit out of his element and try new things and new foods and new people. But this year I felt it in an even bigger different way. Both Nathan and Anneliese can have so much freedom there, freedom that our normal life doesn't afford. With Nathan, I can just set a time/place to meet, and let him go off on his own, and trust that he will be there. He knows which roads are too busy to cross, he knows which people will help him, staff nametags, etc, not to mention the whole place is crawling with teenagers who are high on being Good Kids and tend to flock towards him as some kind of mascot. (You should have seen the teenagers lined up to play cornhole against him in the barn one night.)

And when we go to a playground or the dining room or sit down outside or wherever, both of them can just... run free. Into the woods, not in my line of sight, whatever. I know this doesn't sound novel to those of us who grew up in the 80s (or who live in small towns), but this is... not like our urban Raleigh life. It just isn't. It will come, in time, but we aren't there yet at home. Montreat is a really good place for them (and me) to get used to some kiddie freedom, and they loved it. They walk around and enjoy it like they belong. Which, of course, they do.

Anyway, the whole point of the conference isn't the kids, but the youth, and getting to be a small group leader, and bonding with the other adults who are there to do the same. And this year was as great for that as always.

Another Nathan (who roomed with Nathan in an adjoining room again this year) was there as a shadow (he's running this whole conference for two weeks next year!) and it was the most chill I have ever seen him at Montreat. Like a vacation! He showed up several times at the ends of my sessions, with coffees in hand. He met Nathan at meeting points. He pedaled Anneliese (and all of us) on a sparkly paddleboat.

We all went for a barbecue dinner. We had a lovely week together. (And a lovely few days in Raleigh before that.) It was a super friendship bonding time for us, in a special place. Remembering last year on the edge of the cliff of his move, and all the work and stress and angst about that, it just felt so nice and easy this year. 

And my small group was incredible. We had one hard day full of hard confessions and some things that needed Adult Intervention, but they were well-poised to support each other in it, since they had bonded so quickly at the beginning of the week. They are smart and thoughtful people, these teenagers. And I know I say it every year, but anyone who feels cyncial about kids this age has not watched them stand in a room and look each other in the eye and pray to God to give thanks for other people in that room, specifically by name, people who they only met mere days ago. It's amazing.

So yeah, it was a wonderful week again. It's always hard to leave. After we took Another Nathan to the airport, we came back to load up our own stuff and the kids wanted one last Huckleberry ice cream, and Anneliese spent many weeks' worth of allowance on a neon green sweatshirt blanket that says Montreat on it, so we drove away both happy and sad.

See you next year, Montreaters.