When I was a youth I had amazing experiences through my church. I got to participate in youth Sundays, attend retreats, gather with other kids every week to learn about God, and go on mission trips with my peers. It was with my youth group that I learned to be a leader, lived out the gospel by visiting people in prison, and talked about the difficult issues of the day from AIDS to farm worker rights. Sometimes when I think about the ways my youth group experiences shaped me I feel sad for my daughter, who will not have those same youth group experiences.
Here at SFC we have a small youth group. The most we’ve had at a gathering is 6, a far cry from the 20 plus who showed up regularly at my youth group. We meet monthly, instead of weekly, and we just don’t have the capacity for things to be the way they were in my day. And I’ve come to realize that’s okay. My daughter will experience faith formation in other ways. She has been leading in church by reading scripture in worship since she was 6. That’s not something I got to do in the big churches we attended when I was a child. Church is in her home, helping to clarify that our whole life can be a prayer dedicated to God.
Sometimes she even does get to have some of the same experiences I did, such as this past week when we attended the winter retreat at Suttle Lake United Methodist Camp. Here we were in the same rooms where 25 years before I had attended the winter retreat. It was really cool to see her singing with her friends some of the very same songs I sang. And yet we sang other songs, we talked about things we never even thought about when I was in middle school, it was not the same. And that’s okay. You see what I want for my daughter is not my childhood, not my path to faith formation. She is not me, she needs her own journey, her own path. What I can want for her and work towards is that she has people who support her, that she has opportunities to live out her faith, and that she has spaces to develop her gifts. I know that SFC already provides her with all of this, and I will continue to take her to retreats and camps where her faith is shaped by the stories and guidance of others.
When I do get sad about the fact that she won’t have some of the experiences that mattered to me I try to listen, to the experiences she has that are shaping her and to what she needs that I can help her to find. Her journey is shaping my ever evolving faith as well. I’m excited to see the kind of adult she turns out to be and how her faith continues to form as we as a family live out our commitment to God.
-Eilidh
Serving communion at the retreat
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