Lillia is a member of LOL, my youth juggling troupe based out of Windham Christian Academy.  She is also a member of the North Buxton Baptist youth group, a surprising large group of teens who meet at this little rural church.  It seemed only logical to combine these two parts of this 13 year old's world and do a show at her youth group, and so we did.

While we found the youth group energetic and positive, I have to say this was undoubtedly LOL's worst show of the year. In one sense this is a backhanded compliment because these kids have done a consistently very good job all year. But some nights are like that. There was a lot of dropping, missed cues, breaking character... You get the idea; an off night.  Yes, they did a machete routine for the first time all year, and several juggled them flawlessly. Yes, Elijah, a former student, was there to make a brief guest appearance. And yes, Malakai did a fine job performing a rope escape for the first time. Nevertheless, there were an awful lot of low points as well.

I needed to remind myself that these are the shows LOL exists for in a very real sense. You can learn more from mistakes than successes. I spoke to them the next day about the difference between honest mistakes (juggling after all is a physical feat, so just like any other athletes, we can have off days) and mental mistakes ( wasting time when we could have warmed up, not having our props ready, breaking character to show frustration, etc) 

Middle school is an interesting age. Many of the kids got it. Others were just discouraged. A couple couldn't believe I would tell them any show was less than spectacular (oh dear, get out the participation ribbons). One even denied the show went poorly. But that's all okay. We are a work in progress. I also know from rehearsals since this show that all the kids understood the lesson better than some let on. We will only get better.