Home is where you feel most alive, part 4

THIS TIME LAST YEAR, I was working for a church but felt I never had enough time for people. I hated this fact. Why did I GO in ministry in the FIRST place? I was constantly finding myself never having enough time to meet with all the students I wanted to or that wanted to meet and was like, okay what is wrong with this picture.

Something needs to change.

The thing I grieved the most was I felt like my two burning passions that drove me into going into full-time ministry, my heart for women's ministry and my heart for the hurting/counseling/recovery ministries, seemed to get more and more inched out of the schedule each week due to the other demands my job required and some of the other needs of the church.

I mean, I was still spending time with people and many of my roles revolved around leadership development and mentoring young leaders, but I longed for so much more time with our young women.

I told my small group on Thursday, you know and now I am in this season, where I am technically “not working” and on long-term medical leave for my job, but you know I'm still doing modified hours, where the times I'm able to meet with students during the week.

I feel like I have been given this gift of time.

And there is a simplicity that this illness has brought into my life that is a BLESSING.

God has been renewing my heart and passion for women more and more in this time, and I have been able to spend time with MORE women from all ends of the spectrum in our church this semester. Women even that had I been working my normal hours and still have all my normal responsibilities and roles, I would not have been able to get to know. And it's cool to wait and let God do it, let Him put girls on my heart and then me pursue them. How it's always supposed to be right, well somewhere in the mix of ministry structures and modals and then needing to spend the majority of my time with those in my home group or the leaders under my wing, or what have you...

The beauty of it all now, is all those structures and systems have come crashing to the ground, the ones I hated anyway and felt were suffocating me and choking out more and more of my passion, so less charging ahead and more waiting on God. More His way, less mine or man's way.

And I love being able to open up my house now. Even just the circumstances of needing to be at home and having girls come over for tea at my house, has been ushering in something new. There is a different dynamic when you invite someone into your home. And it is crazy how much so many of the girls just love coming over and feel at home in our place, a refuge from the world of campus or their busy apartments. And that, if this was this time last year, I would've not suggested meeting at home first, we would be hitting up our nearest coffee shop.

But God has been re-igniting my passion for women... to know who they are and to know more of who God really is.

It is interesting that in a season where it can seem so much was taken away, that instead of finding I have less, I have more.

But isn't this the way that Jesus works?

He is always turning the way we see or do things upside down, so that He can TRULY be glorified and we find His way is better.

His way is good.
His way leads to freedom and He is always doing something new.

So with that, I feel I can relate because I may have never voiced it out loud, but while I knew I always wanted to have a family some day and wanted to be able to stay at home with the children at least when they're really little... just the mere THOUGHT of being a stay at home mom was something I was like, I do not know how I will SURVIVE.

I wasn't MADE to stay at home, I've always been and out and about kind of woman! How in the world would I do that? And I resolved to be like some of the moms I've interacted with over the years who would work a part-time job even if just for five hours a week to get out and have something of their own still.

But, you know the crazy thing is. It has been a little more than eight months of being mostly at home and I have not been bored a single day in this.

Apart from the physical pain, symptoms and limitations I experience daily, this shift has actually been refreshing in many ways, still hard in others, but surprising.

And I ENJOY being at home! I never thought I would be able to say that. I always feared when I lived with roommates, that as I was always one of the roommates in any of my places over the years, who was “never there,” that what was it going to be like when I'm married?!

I mean, don't I need to kinda be home to SEE my husband?

to be continued...