Pick me!

So, we took the youth group to the river the past two days. Tuesday we took the high school hooligans and yesterday we took the junior high jacks. Whew, what fun it is to be on the river, tubing and swimming in the hottest days of the summer. most of the kids came back looking like tomatoes...

but there was a cool story in the middle of all this.

it started on Monday. I was sitting at the table after dinner with Aubrey when I got a call from one of the parents of a middle school boy. From the conversation I learned that his son was scared to come to youth group activities because of another boy who had "bullied" him. it had gotten so bad that his son didn't even want to come to the River Day. I did the usual "well, I'm sorry about this. I'll have a conversation with him" type thing and that was that.

Then yesterday, the boy came in and saw the "bully" and immediately clung to his mother and said, "I knew he would be here. I can't do this." His mom told him to hang in there and to give it a chance. End of story as far as I know.

Later that day while we were all swimming, he comes up to me. He says, "remember what my dad said to you on the phone the other day?"

I said, "Yeah. Is everything okay?"

He said, "yeah, it's over now. I'm OK."

I got curious at this point. "Why's it over?"

"because he picked me to be in his group."

And that was that. All that had to happen was for that kid to feel like he belonged. I know the other kid, the supposed bully, only picked him to be in his group because he needed 6 other people in his group in order to go swimming first. I know that the scared kid was the last to be picked. but he was picked!

Oh the power of including others...