Then there's the life that is not fully mine that I live outside of my hour of quietness every morning. I never know which grandbaby I might be snuggling with after work, or what kind of day my husband has had, or which chore has to be done and it better be tonight. Or if the almost two year old will be snuggly and giving me fishy face kisses or chucking toys at any adult in his realm of rage.
As a matter of fact, I should feel so much freer. Our church has dissolved and become home to another church. For the first time in over twenty years I am not a leader in our church. No meetings. No cleaning crew. No early arrival for practice. No committee conversations. Not one thing on my calendar I need to attend because I should show support because I'm a leader. I don't even know if "our" church is going to end up being in the same building we've worshipped in for 25 years. Church shopping is interesting. And I don't know if that's good or bad. There is something so freeing about not having someone come up to me and know who I am. I don't have labels yet while church shopping. But, I'm not a woman who loves to shop either, so there's that.
My job has ramped up. Granted it's not a job where I'm attached to my phone 24-7. I don't have a lot of decisions to make. And it's not life or death. But it has grown to absorb more hours of my life. Something as tiny as having 1/2 hour lunch deducted whether you take a 1/2 break or not is an irksome reality and it etches out time from living my life. I don't want to sit in a break room. Or walk the halls of a clinic or absorb the outdoor air that is full of dust from construction or smoke. Leaving campus in not a reality when it takes 6 minutes to get to the office and 6 minutes to get to the car parked in employee parking. So I end up eating, chatting and heading back to my desk to at least be productive. Part of my job is trained monkeyish. I do a lot of scanning. Oh, it's necessary. And I certainly will gladly accept my paycheck that is based on my licensed skillset regardless of whether I'm actively doing a service they can bill for, or scanning, or waiting to see if a patient will show up or not.
Then there's the work fog of being in three different locations doing different tasks in each and not really knowing what is actually on my agenda too far in advance. And the learning curve. Every last one of those situations is full of learning and correction. The policy and guidelines and expectations are clear and very black and white but while that's true, it's also true that the computer part of it all gives us three or four different ways to do the exact same thing. I find myself often accidentally discovering a short cut or another way of doing something but not really knowing how that happened or if I can remember how to do it again.
Then the weeks of intense learning curves of late, then the plunging in and trying to translate book knowledge with a manual you cannot consult because there are literally phones ringing and impatient providers standing over you with a task that must be done now on-the-spot, hold-your-breath-and-guess training. Merging that with watching kids so mom can attend two weddings in one weekend and joining the herd for a baby shower, or softball game, or trip to Target, or dinner. And something in my very taxed brain had to give. And friends. The blog was it.
But come back soon. Because Rob went to the lake with two grandkids and I've spent so much time with the littles and there are so many stories. I will tell them.
2 comments:
Church has changed so much in the past 20 years. I've been attending the same church since 1996. We had about 350 members then, but maybe 200 were regular attenders. Like you, I quickly became a leader in the church and led the drama program, was involved in women's ministry, and taught Sunday School. In 2000, a fire and a move across the highway to a more prominent location changed everything. Then a new pastor came. One who was into church growth. That's a wonderful thing, since we were baptizing new believers.
But over the past 17 years, we've grown to about 2800 members. The Sunday School (or small group) class I attended finally disbanded when the teacher went into ministry. What I've found is that while I love my church, and love our pastor, I miss the smaller church. I miss it being the center of our lives. I miss attending Sunday and Wednesday evenings as well as Sunday morning.
Those things, Wed & Sun nights, have gone the way of the dinosaurs here in Sugar Hill. Families are younger and they don't attend. Our church is younger (the median age is about 30). I don't have anything against NOT having Sun and Wed evenings - it's just strange to me. And I miss the closeness that used to be there.
I guess I'm just growing old.
Interestingly, I don't know that you are old. Some younger families have decided to go to a more traditional church rather than embrace the aesthetic of the new one that has replaced ours. But the Wednesday/Sunday night thing is definitely getting less important as time marches on. But the small group mindset is big in our area. Many of the churches around have Sunday large gatherings (with a separate thing for kids during the service) and no Sunday school but it is strongly recommended to join a small group. They even say that's where the growth occurs. Maybe a small group is the new equivalent to Wed and Sunday evenings. I don't know. Change is always hard.
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