Creation Care, Grief, and the Gift of Joy: Reflections from my first Service and Learning trip
Thank you Youth Director Clyde Quarles for writing today’s Weekly Word.
By the time I arrived at MSP Airport for Park Avenue United Methodist Church’s Youth Ministry Creation Care Service and Learning Trip, I was overwhelmed with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. We had spent months preparing for this moment—planning, fundraising, coordinating, and imagining what our week in Florida might hold. Yet as I walked into the airport with our youth and leaders, I quickly learned that no amount of preparation could completely prepare me for what it meant to lead a group far from home.
The first day was stressful and taxing. Before we even left Minneapolis, I found myself confronting TSA after discovering that money had intentionally been taken out of my bag. Somewhere in the chaos, I also realized that I had somehow managed to leave nearly two-thirds of what I had packed at home. On top of everything else, I had never traveled with a group like this before, much less been one of the people responsible for leading it.
By the end of that first day, the stress had gotten to me.
I realized that I had not carried myself in the way I wanted our young people to see me. Instead of pretending otherwise or hiding behind my title as Director of Youth Ministry, I addressed the group. I apologized for how I had carried myself and acknowledged that what they had witnessed was not the kind of leader I am—or the leader I aspire to become.
Looking back, I am grateful for that moment.
Leadership is not about always having everything together. Sometimes leadership means allowing people to see that you are human. It means taking responsibility when you fall short and demonstrating what it looks like to return to the person you are striving to become. In many ways, that difficult first day prepared me for everything that followed.
And what followed was incredible.
Throughout our week in Florida, our youth experienced creation in ways that are difficult to capture in words. We kayaked through bioluminescent waters and watched the water illuminate around us. We snorkeled in the crystal-clear water of Blue Spring State Park. We participated in beach cleanup efforts and helped conduct mole crab research, learning that caring for creation requires us not only to admire the natural world but also to study it, understand it, and take responsibility for protecting it.
Then there were the moments that simply left us in awe.
One morning, we woke up around 3:00 a.m. to watch a SpaceX rocket launch. Standing beneath the Florida sky, watching humanity send something beyond the earth while surrounded by young people I had come to care deeply about, I was reminded of just how enormous and mysterious this world is.
If I had to describe the trip through two emotions, however, they would be amazement and joy.
Joy has not always been an easy emotion for me.
My relationship with grief is complicated. Trauma, pain, and loss have made grief a familiar presence in my life. Sometimes grief has felt easier to recognize than happiness. There is a strange familiarity that can develop with sorrow when you have carried it long enough.
Florida interrupted that familiarity.
For perhaps the first time in my life, I experienced sustained joy—not simply a good moment followed by another difficult one, but days filled with laughter, wonder, community, exploration, and amazement. I found myself surrounded by young people discovering new things about creation and, in many ways, discovering new things about one another.
Something shifted relationally, too.
Throughout the trip, I felt that our youth collectively began to accept me as the person who would be leading this ministry. Trust cannot be demanded because of a job title. It has to be cultivated through presence, consistency, vulnerability, laughter, difficult conversations, and shared experiences. Somewhere between the airport, the ocean, the springs, the kayaks, the service projects, and our conversations, I felt that trust beginning to take root.
Florida also carried another significance for me.
Years ago, I lived in Miami. I learned how to swim in the Atlantic Ocean, but I had not returned to Florida since. Coming back felt strangely full circle. I was returning to waters that were part of my childhood, but this time I was returning as an adult responsible for helping young people discover their own relationship with the world around them.
And throughout every part of the trip, I thought about my mom.
When I was young, my mother instilled in me the importance of being a steward of both the earth and humanity. She taught me, long before I had theological language for it, that we have a responsibility to care for what has been entrusted to us: our neighbors, our communities, the vulnerable, the land, the water, and the world we share.
Being on a Creation Care Service and Learning Trip made her feel present in almost every moment.
Standing beside the ocean, cleaning a beach, exploring Florida's ecosystems, watching our youth marvel at the natural world—I felt grief and gratitude existing beside one another.
I allowed myself to be stretched thin by both.
I grieved that my mom was not here for me to call and tell about everything we were experiencing. At the same time, I was overwhelmed with gratitude because I could see the values she planted in me continuing to bear fruit. The lessons she taught me were now influencing the way I lead young people and encouraging another generation to understand creation not simply as something to consume or enjoy, but as something sacred that has been entrusted to our care.
That may be what I will remember most about this trip.
Creation care is about more than cleaning beaches, studying ecosystems, or appreciating beautiful landscapes.
It is about relationship.
Relationship with the earth.
Relationship with one another.
Relationship with God.
And sometimes, relationship with the people whose love and lessons continue shaping us even when they are no longer physically beside us.
I left Florida differently than I arrived.
I arrived anxious, overwhelmed, and questioning whether I was prepared to lead.
I returned home carrying gratitude, deeper relationships with our youth, renewed wonder for creation, and a reminder that grief and joy do not always have to compete for space within us.
Sometimes they can sit beside one another.
Sometimes the same ocean can remind us of what we have lost and everything we have been given.
And sometimes, when we allow ourselves to be fully present to both, we discover that caring for creation can also teach us something about caring for ourselves, caring for one another, and receiving the beautiful, complicated gift of being alive.
With a grateful and awakened heart,