Find them fascinating, really.

And this weekend I was among about 700 of them altogether. My friend Christian organizes an annual youth conference for the association of Vineyard churches here on the east coast and asked me to tag along this time. Even sing a few songs, which was so very fun for me.

And well, this was a youth conference, you know. Lots of wonderful hearts connected to funny mouths that sometimes say funny things. Like one kid who boldly stated that God has a Disney World life prepared here on earth for us.

And it was all I could do to not crack up laughing, bless his heart.

I texted this sentiment to my brother Jason and he replied: Well you must have been one of the ones who died on Thunder Mountain!

Remember that thing about laughing or dying? Yeah, I regularly choose to laugh. And often my friends and family do with me. When they’re not crying with me, of course.

And then, this other kid, he was so endearing. He was maybe fourteen and dressed in black, a la Johnny Cash. Though Johnny Cash never did have a green streak in his hair.

Now Pat (which is not his real name) had gotten the chutzpah to get up on the stage and say a prayer in front of all his peers. It was a good one, too. Though I cannot begin to tell you when I’ve ever heard a bad one. However, my mom’s blessing for the food the other night might have come close. Cause she quickly said, Thanks for the food, God! and that was it. Like God was standing at the stove, stirring the pots and pans and affectionately known as Ma to the neighborhood children. My sister and I started laughing. And laughing. And then each took our turn at the prayer too.

So maybe it was actually one of the best prayers I’d ever heard.

But back to Pat. After his prayer, which had obviously been extremely nerve-wracking for him, he wandered to the back of the room, right where me and my friend Shane were sitting. He made eye contact with us as he walked by and stated quite frankly: Well, that was weird.

Just like that.

And I figured that’s not such a bad statement and I could use it a little more in my own life lately. Along with some others, of course.

Shane and I wanted to laugh, but we took him seriously and told him he did a great job. At which point he started to just stand and hover directly in front of us and stare. He finally broke the silence by apologizing for standing and staring, but, he said, we just seem so happy.

I jumped in and said, We are happy! And then promptly remembered my life and quietly added the word kinda to amend my statement.

Then I told him I like his green hair, and, teasing him just a bit, asked if it was natural.

At which point he quite seriously explained to me that, Nobody has green hair.

Oh, my bad.

And when Shane got him a chair, this kid started to talk. He told us about what God had been doing in his life–told us something of a vision that he’d had–and though I couldn’t quite understand all of it, I knew that I wanted to be someone in his life who listens.

Because isn’t that what we all want? Somebody to listen to us. Show us, even more than tell us, that we’re important. Take our word for it when we emphatically state that nobody has green hair naturally.

And even though I am quite sure that God does not indeed have a Disney World life planned for all us; that something that predictable, that neatly engineered, just isn’t what life is about anyway, I see God in those moments of connection with others.

And I feel God deep inside me, even in the midst of  all that pain; not buried, but deep.

Not Disney World, but something interesting; something better than worse and something in which the love is worth the pain and the risk of weirdness is worth the rewards of stepping out and saying something in the first place.