Fuzzy Theology

As a teacher, I hear a quote often. “There’s no tired like back-to-school-teacher tired.” And while I completely agree with that statement, I would also like to propose the following:

There’s also no tired like an adult-chaperone-on-the-third-day-of-their-youth-group’s-week-long-high-adventure-camp tired.

And while I may have been exhausted – I made it to Day Three.

If this is your first time joining us, be sure to click over to the start of our story to learn how and why I’d entered this exhausted phase.

But you know – Having been a youth minister, a teacher, a college student, and a new parent, I’ve come to realize that there are different levels of being tired.

There’s the tired you feel when you wake up in the morning after a rough night. Maybe it was too hot in your bedroom, or maybe your mattress was lumpy. Maybe your mind wouldn’t turn off no matter the number of lost sheep you counted or Hail Mary’s you prayed. This kind of tired can be cured with a strong cup of coffee (or tea if you prefer) and maybe some morning exercise. It’s the tired you know will go away the next time your head hits the pillow.

And there’s physically tired. The I’ve been standing for sixteen hours kind of tired. Or the I hit the gym a little too hard this week tired. It’s an ache in your muscles that reminds you you’re alive – and probably old enough to know better than to try and jump into an exercise program without a doctor’s note and a handful of pain reliever.

Next, there’s the tired you feel when you’ve spent one too many nights awake working, or scrolling endlessly on social media, or late-night binge watching your favorite series. It’s a tired that begins to seep into your bones and work its way into your heart. This type of tired needs more than coffee to perk you up. It’s the type of tired that needs a vacation on the beach somewhere, or a week of lazy afternoons spent in bed.

The last type of tired is the new-parent tried. It’s the kind of tired you get where you lose what it means to be human. Did I shower today? Did I eat? When was the last time I slept? Where is that smell coming from? It’s the kind of bone-weary exhaustion where your eyes start playing tricks on you. Where you see things you shouldn’t, or don’t see things you should. It’s the tired where common sense is a myth and coffee is nothing but cold flavored water. This type of tired typically can’t be cured for at least eighteen years.

It was this new-parent type of tired that overcame me on the third day of camp.

And by the grace of God and some rather lucky planning, our schedule called for a more relaxing day. Daily Mass in the morning. Faith lessons and small group time after lunch. And lots of unstructured free time to explore the other activities our base camp had to offer.

We created a rotating schedule of adult supervision to allow all of the other bone-weary, raft-pummeled, chaperones to get some rest away from the noise and the chaos of the one hundred teenagers we brought with us. Whoever said teenagers sleep all day have never brought a group of them away on retreat. It’s a lie.

They never sleep.

But we got to – finally.

I could count on one hand the hours I’d slept in the past week. I’d bounced from retreat to retreat to 22 hour bus trip to long late nights talking with my small group. But that was my life as a youth minister… and I wouldn’t have changed it for anything.

When it came my turn to rest, I climbed in my bunk, comedically set right in the middle of the window facing the rest of the camp – like I was an actor on a very small screen. It was too hot to hide in the blankets and whoever’d decorated the cabins had left the windows bare of any curtains. I could see the whole of the camp, and they could watch me sleep.

It was with that thought that I fell asleep – hard.

Angry buzzing from my cell phone woke me up the minute my eyes shut – or at least it felt that way. I blindly snoozed my alarm and peeked an eye open to make sure the camp wasn’t in chaos before I drifted off again for another few minutes.

This time, something caught my eye in my view of the camp.

It was a certain famous pirate, swaggering around, chatting with my teens and fellow chaperones.

“Huh,” I thought to myself. “I’m more tired than I realized.” Because surely this pirate, in full costume and fancy stage makeup, was some weird hallucination – a warning from my brain that I’d pushed myself too hard.

I fell asleep a second time with a smile on my face.

But when my alarm woke me minutes later, that smile turned into worry.

Because the pirate was still there.

Closer this time.

Close enough that I could hear his voice… a rather distinctive voice.

“Am I seeing things?”

But since I’d entered the point of new-parent exhaustion, common sense wasn’t my friend. I could have taken a picture. I could have taken a video. I could have climbed from my bunk and approached the pirate apparition and demanded he prove he was real. All of these things would have settled my worries.

But no.

I did none of them.

I ran.

I mean it wasn’t far – but I bolted out the back of the cabin, rubbing my eyes as I staggered toward the mess hall. All the while thinking of how I could explain this to my fellow chaperones. Ending up in the emergency room in the middle of Nowhere, Tennessee for pirate hallucinations wasn’t on my camp bucket list.

I remember they served fried chicken for dinner that night. I remember picking my seat carefully, making sure I wasn’t followed by any ghost pirates. I remember the thunk of the tray as someone sat in the seat in front of me.

And I remember his voice when he said, “‘Ello, love.”

The pirate was back.

And this time I couldn’t run.

I often used to imagine how I would react if I’d ever found myself blessed to witness a miracle, or a Marian vision. Let me tell you, God knows what He’s doing in blessing those He chooses with those visits. Their courage to speak up and interact and share their stories is a wonder. Their faith is an inspiration. And in that moment, I knew I was nothing like them.

Because in the face of something unbelievable –

I froze.

Yup.

I ignored the fancy-dressed, smooth-talking pirate sitting in front of me, eating the same fried chicken dinner I was. (It’s probably why I remember eating fried chicken that day.)

I’d probably made vows and pledges and promises to get better sleep or to give up coffee as I continued to ignore the vision in front of me while he chattered on about camp and Daily Mass and his experience in small group time.

I focused on my chicken.

It wasn’t until a fellow chaperone, the only other one from my home parish, dropped her tray beside us – and struck up a conversation with the pirate.

She could see him too.

You see, this pirate.

This apparition.

Was one of our college interns.

Who dressed up for his part-time job as a certain famous pirate and traveled around the amusement parks.

Like I said – common sense wasn’t my friend.

I was tired.

And we all get tired sometimes.

Not just physically.

But spiritually too.

There’s the spiritually tried you get when your life is packed full of work and errands and chores to do, and Mass and prayer simply become one of them. A task to cross of the list instead of a conversation at dinner spent with the most important family member. It’s the tired you feel when prayer is an activity and not a relationship, and God is someone you run to when you need a favor. This kind of tired needs a spiritual infusion of love and energy – some spiritual coffee if you will. It’s an easy, daily tired to fall into, and one we must be aware of.

There’s also the spiritually tired we get when our prayers have seemingly gone unanswered and our hearts and faith muscles ache. It’s the tired that makes it hard to pray just one more time for God’s Mercy in our helplessness or hopelessness. It’s the tired when we need others to surround us and hold us up because we’ve been weakened by our circumstances. This type of tired calls for the community of Christ to lift us, to support us, and to carry us.

And there’s the spiritually exhausted where our minds begin to play tricks on us and tell us things that aren’t true. These whispered lies, these false promises, weigh us down and only add to the exhaustion clouding our eyes of faith. It is a dangerous type of tired where we can’t see for ourselves what is real and what is not. And we need the guidance of our faith mentors, our priests, our Saints, and our community members to stand with us while we navigate through the mess in our minds. We need a trip to the spiritual emergency room to clear away the visions of pirates.

But Christ is the remedy for all of this spiritual exhaustion.

And He’s waiting with open arms ready to transform our tiredness into triumphs and our bone-weary aches into the love we need to care for His people.

“They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength, they will soar on eagles’ wings; They will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.”

Isaiah 40:31

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Adventures in Youth Ministry. I would love to hear from you! Share your stories of hope or of your spiritual tiredness with me.

You are in my prayers!