About four months ago, I did one of the hardest things I have had to do in a long time. After 8 years of being our church's youth leaders, my hubby and I stepped down. We stepped down from something that was familiar, something we had fun doing, and something that I didn't want to let go of. I felt like I lost my identity.
I have felt the nudge for quite sometime, but I was too afraid to give it away. So I clung to it in hopes that I could make it better...that these feelings would pass and a giant doorway would open up and God's voice would tell me "You are right where you need to be". I held on for over a year and there was no giant doorway that opened up and no loud boisterous voice from the heavens that told me I was going in the right direction. The youth in our church had been dwindling down. Sports and drama teams seemed to win out over youth events and fellowship. Parents seemed to want to depend on us to instill certain priorities in their children, but yet, the parents themselves could not make commitments. We struggled....we cried ....and then I knew...we had to step down. We wrestled and prayed over our decision because we knew that in our primarily older congregation no one else would step up and it would fall on the shoulders of our part-time pastor. After much soul searching, we did step down and the pastor stepped up. I am sad to say that the youth attendence still has not increased, despite many prayers.
I am at peace with that decision...I really feel like it was the one that God wanted us to make. However, now we struggle with where we fit in. When we took over the youth we were in our late 20's and early 30's. We were hip, we were cool. Now almost 9 years later we find that there are not many other people in our church our age. Most are over the age of 70 which I love because there is so much to learn from them. But if I am being honest at times its hard because they do not want anything to change. They want things to remain the same as they were 30 years ago and honestly, our church is not growing and they are not reaching out and it saddens me. Everything that comes in is hoarded...and therefore it all becomes stale.
I say all this as a plea for prayer as my hubby and I try to discern where the Lord is leading us next. We want to be obedient to Him and what He wants us to do. We also don't want to make any decisions based on our feelings or emotions.
In the meantime, we wait patiently...we pray fervently and we praise Him in all things.
287. making better choices
288. snow covered fields
289. lazy Sundays
290. accountability
291. the smell of fresh laundry
292. the need of a friend that was met
293. memories captured in a frame
294. a homemade meal
295. a local community coming together after tragedy
