Restoration

I have been questioning a lot of things about my faith lately. Just what exactly I would respond too if someone asked me to explain the gospel or salvation or redemption or restoration. Just flipping a few things around in my head about God and what is real and what has been fed to me in theology classes and church. Do I really know the gospel in a way that I can communicate it, not only to others but even to myself in times of deep struggle. So the word restoration has been ringing in my head the last few days and when I woke up this morning a story popped into my head. So here it is.
Almost two years ago I went to a week long retreat in Colorado Springs. Part of our journey that week was to be involved with a "triad", which was three people that were not randomly grouped together, as in we were placed together based on our essays. So the first day I met my triad with Jae a forty-ish woman from Colorado by way of Chicago, andCarlyle a forty-ish year old guy from Phoenix that looked just like Jim Carrey. We were only scheduled to meet together for one and a half hours, not one time did we finish in under two and a half. Our goal was to meet and one of us was to share our story, as in life story. The other two were given a different goal every day, like we could only ask curiosity questions or we had to listen to what the Holy Spirit was telling us before we opened our mouths. When Carlyle told his story on day three we spent well over two hours talking through several big stories. One of which had happened at five years old. The story goes that he and a friend of his had received goody bags at Halloween at church, each bad containing a lot of candy, toys and an apple. While waiting for his step-father to pick him up his friend looked into his bag and said "man! my bad doesn't have an apple in it." He said his friend looked so dejected that he grabbed his apple out of his bag and handed it to his buddy. His friend not wanting to take it started to push it away. Just as they started to shove the apple back and forth between them Carlyle's step-father emerges from the hallway to fetch him and immediately jerks the apple away from him and throws it into his friends bag. On the way to the car he is berating Carlyle for being one of the most selfish children he knew, after helping him into the back seat his step-father grabbed the bag of candy and threw it on the front seat between him and Carlyle's mother. All the way home Carlyle had to endure a verbal beating based on something that was not even true. He never got the bag of candy back and after only a minor attempt to salvage his identity, he gave up.
The day he told us this story there were other stories of great sorrow, and much deeper hurts. But on the last day that we met as a triad we were to write each other encouragement letters. By this time in the week we had all shared our stories and felt so cared for and loved by the other two, in fact I still have both letters that I received that day. As a going away present for Carlyle not only did Jae and I read our letters to him but as we sprawled ourselves out on this beautiful patch of grass we gave him a bag of candy with an apple in the bag. We all laughed and laughed. His face beamed. His laughter said so much more, it was a healing laugh. That is possibly one of the best memories of my life.
When I think of restoration I do not think of theology that has been taught to me in so many places, I think of a beautiful laugh between three friends.