My role??

I'm getting anxious for summer to get here. While I'm definitely thankful for the warmer weather in Wichita, I'm ready to have it be warm and stay warm. Wichita weather is sooooo strange....


Seriously....60's tomorrow and then a 30's and SNOW on Saturday?? What? I just don't understand. I guess I just have to endure the Saturday weather and get through it to get back to the 50/60's next week. :)
This weekend is the high school spring retreat. My role looks much different this time around being that I'm 36 weeks pregnant and can't stay on my feet for very long and get winded walking from one end of the room to the other. :) I think I'll go with them Friday night and come back and sleep at home and then go back again sometime on Saturday. I will miss being there the whole weekend and seeing what God has in store for this time away. Fall retreat was definitely a turning point for our ministry so I'm hoping that spring retreat is just a follow up for that.

I miss doing youth ministry full time. In an ideal world, I would be able to stay home with our baby and meet with girls in the afternoon and go in and help Pete with whatever needed to be done that week. I soooooo miss doing that. I was really challenged with what my role was and spent a lot of time thinking about it the past couple weeks. When I was at home and working full time at CCC, I had time to do a lot of discipling. Between HouseGroups and having the freedom in the afternoons to leave work or have girls come meet at church, or even hang with them at night or on the weekends, I was able to spend a lot more time investing in the relationships that I had built. At my wedding in this picture, each one of these students I had personally spent time with and invested in:


Youth ministry and discipleship was my life. I loved it!! Ministry looks sooooooo different now that I'm married and having a baby and not doing it full time. It's been a hard transition because I don't feel like I'm doing what I'm good at. As well as struggling with not having connected with the girls here to the extent that I really want to. I would love to have a group like this here in Wichita, but as I've been processing this the last couple weeks, I'm realizing that my role here looks really different.

In my small group we've been reading the book "Velvet Elvis" by Rob Bell and last week I was really challenged. He was talking about having to kill the "Superpastor" in you and I totally related with that. Putting to death the demands of what others (or yourself) feel like you have to be to be a good spiritual leader. I feel like there's part of me that has to be here what I was back home. The "superdiscipler" if that makes any sense. Involved in everything and the leader who connects with all the girls and has invested time and energy into their spiritual walk. If they are struggling, it's my responsibility to talk with them and point them in the right direction. And right now, I physically can't do that for all the girls. My responsibilities now are my husband and now my baby girl and theeeennnn the girls in the ministry. Allowing my mind to recognize this has been difficult and caused me to feel like I'm failing. I've been recently asking God to show me what HE wants my role to be and what that looks like. Even with this spring retreat coming up this weekend, it's really hard for me not to be there and be apart of everything. I feel like I'm missing out and not being there fully for the girls. But again....I just can't do it all and I know if I did all that I wanted to, I would wear myself out physically and I just can't afford to do that to my body at this point in the pregnancy. I have to take it easy.

Anyways, just some things that have been running through my mind lately. You'd think I would have figured it out sooner being that I've almost lived in Wichita for 2 years (in August) but it's been a process. And it will continue to be a process. I'm trusting God to provide and work out the details for what this next stage of life will look like. It's going to be completely new and nothing like I've never experienced before. It scares me to death, but I'm so ready and so excited for it!!!