Stephen Anthony Ray

Well, right now I am sitting in my office working on a paper for next week.  The boys and Matt (Rose) are playing hide-and-seek using the entire church.  I’ll be honest - these knuckleheads drive me insane.  They don’t listen.  You have to tell them everything three or four times before they’ll obey you.  Their actions are characterized by an impromptu randomness and spontaneity that simply cannot be explained without expletives.  They have these crazy, insecure mood swings and are amazingly sensitive (which of course is masked by an all too obnoxious shell of overcompensation).  

And the truth is…I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Being a youth pastor has been the single greatest joy of my life thus far.  Right when I think that they never listen or that my work is done in vain, I see something - some action or some kernel of growth in character (albeit slowly) - that drives me on to keep pouring.  And I’ve come to realize over the years that youth ministry is much like the planting of a seasonal crop.  You plant and see immediate growth followed by long seasons of redress and quickening and chastizement and replanting and uprooting.  And then, it grows again - but bigger.  And bigger.  And bigger still until the consistency of the plant abandons its seasonal lifestyle and becomes an evergreen.

They say that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.  I’ll be starting Grad school at Rice University in August, and I’ll lose all this craziness - this untradable, priceless craziness - for the institutionalization of academia once again.  I don’t have to wait until then.  I already see what I’m missing.  I miss them already.

SRay