Galatians 6:2 says. “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Some of you are familiar with the scripture I’m sure, it’s a scripture that I’ve too often only said the first half of the sentence.
Summer 2022 for me was a whirlwind. It was challenging and exhausting, but as I have had time to reflect, I have been able to appreciate the many powerful experiences and glimpses of God I had along the way.
This past summer I was all over the place. My season as a local high school baseball season ended and the very next week I was off to my first of three Young Life trips for the summer. My first trip was my staff member summer assignment, and I was very excited to be assigned to a two week Servant Leadership Project (SLP) at Point Loma University in San Diego, especially as my SLP opportunity had been canceled a few years ago due to COVID. SLP is designed for upperclassmen high schoolers or incoming college kids that are looking to grow deeper in their faith alongside community (the way it should be!). Our group had people from all over the country, and we spent our mornings studying scripture and in prayer groups and our afternoons immersed in the surrounding community. It was an incredible time of conversation, transformation, community, and discipleship.
From there I headed home for some vacation time with family before heading to my Beyond Malibu, a camp three hours north of Vancouver by car followed by an hour and a half water taxi to base camp. This was a wilderness backpacking trip designed for students that had already had the camp experience and wanted to be challenged in a new way. This trip was with some newly graduated South Christian students who I have been walking alongside the past three years. It was a special ending to their time as high schoolers and my time as the leader of South Christian Younglife.
After the Beyond Malibu trip I enjoyed a few days at home before heading to Timberwolf for a week with some middle school campers. This time, I got to take some incoming East Kentwood high school kids to start building a foundation for my new role of Area Director of East Kentwood. It was an incredible trip! 4 kids in our cabin gave their life to Christ, including one that was a day before addition to our group! It was such a gift to see God working in these kids hearts.
When I got home from my third and final trip, I took a 3 hour nap. I was spent, I had nothing else to give.
I could write a post on every trip, but one trip stands out as being more difficult than the others. I mentioned above that I had the privilege of going to Beyond Malibu - a camp that is the “holy grail” of Young Life camps. The beauty was said to be second to none and Bob Goff has a place there, so it had to be cool. The travel to get there was an experience within itself. The travel started with us driving to Detroit from Grand Rapids via a 12 passenger van. Our flight to Seattle was supposed to leave at 11pm and we didn’t end up leaving until closer to midnight. We got off the plane at 1:30am Seattle time.
Prior to the trip, I was having the hardest time finding a rental vehicle, so I did what anyone does when they are desperate for answers, I googled; “Churches in Seattle”. I emailed five churches, one got back to me. This was the response I got:
“Thanks for reaching out! I've shared your transportation need with our community-wide
chat where we share needs like this often. If someone in our church community is able
to help, they will contact you directly!”
If you are anything like me, you read this and think, “what a polite way to say no,” but just hours later, my google prayer was met with an answer, Tim! I am getting off track, but a 25 year old Yale grad said yes to us borrowing his 2009 Honda Odyssey van. Praise Jesus!
So at 1:30am we got the keys that were taped under the miracle van and started our journey towards Canada. At 4:30am we crossed the border. We were the only car at the border. We continued our journey through Vancouver and to our first water taxi where we drove the van onboard. After getting off the water taxi, we continued our drive to Egmont and finally arrived at 10am. We spent the rest of the day and night recovering, and the next morning, we boarded our second water taxi that would bring us to base camp.
Before we left basecamp, we each packed our bags with a guide. They went over everything in our bag. The things we needed and maybe more importantly the things we didn’t need. On these trips it’s so important to pack light. Over the next 6 days we were going to be going up and down over 7000 feet of elevation on a path that we would quickly find out on the mountain, wasn’t really a path. I had a long sleeve shirt AND pants on. My thought process was I did not want to get sunburnt and have my legs scrapped up after one day. Logical thoughts. My guide on the other hand said, you should probably ditch the long pants at the very least. I naturally, knowing better, objected.
The next morning, the 11 of us (6 students, 2 leaders, 3 guides) made our way to yet another water taxi that would bring us to the mountain. We were full of hope, excitement, fear, expectations, and uncertainty.
We got on the mountain and within 15 minutes there was a bear sighting. Our hike had begun.
The hike was brutal. I was physically hot and it was clear the pants had been a mistake. We had to stop and wait multiple times to figure out if we were going the right way. That led to me being a bit hot emotionally too. At one point we got off trek a bit and we had to head back, and as we were heading down I tripped and fell HARD. My knee went straight into a rock. My spirit weak and my knee bruised, I was frustrated and we had only been on the mountain for a few hours. The guides, sensing some of our groups frustration, gave each of us a sour patch candy to bring up our spirits. I internally scoffed. I’m 33, a sour patch isn’t going to turn this thing around. Stubbornness was in full effect.
I saved my sour patch in my pant pocket and kept trudging along until… I couldn’t. My quads started cramping like there was a race to see which leg could form a tighter knot. I was pounding my legs and trying to massage them out, but to no avail.
In this moment of complete humiliation and weakness there was only one answer: I needed help. Thankfully my high school friends, in far greater shape than I am, without hesitation offered to start putting some of my weight from my pack on their shoulders.
I began to realize that this trip was a microcosm of the previous year for me. I was spread thin trying to do ministry in way too many spaces. I was trying to take my first steps as an Area Director in Kentwood, while team leading at South Christian, still trying to gain traction at Davenport University, and keep up with my Grandville campaigners group. Additionally, I had the responsibilities of being a head varsity baseball coach at South Christian, a husband, father, and we were in the process of moving houses. I want to be very clear, this is not a “woe is me”cry. It is a cry that I did not set myself up to be in an emotionally, spiritually, and physically health place. Because of that, I as a leader sometimes fell short. But here is the good news, I had some really incredible people around me that helped pick me up and cared for me when I needed help or may not have felt like I deserved grace.
Sometimes the greatest way we can show people the gospel is to show them that we can’t do this life alone. In Galatians 6:2 Paul writes, “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." It’s a scripture that I’ve too often only focused on the first half of the verse. We are dependent on Jesus and the community of believers we surround ourselves with. That’s one of my favorite things about Young Life. We have this incredible opportunity to invite people into a space that allows them to be healed and cared for in the name of Jesus while we are also with them. We can’t prevent storms and burdens from coming our way, but we can allow people to help us. When we try to carry too much on our own, we slow ourselves down and we slow the people around us down. When we share each other's burdens, we go farther, sometimes even to the top of a mountain.
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