permission granted

Making the decision meant my first real failure. Yes there have been misspoken words, missteps and minor mistakes made along the way of these first 2 years of youth ministry, but making the decision to dissolve this ministry meant, in my head, failure.

Not that I ever defined it that way until yesterday. But that's how it felt. A haunting feeling that unless I somehow forced everything into working order then somehow my viability as a youth minister was pulled into question. There was a lot of guilt. A lot of shut doors. A lot of fighting and praying on my part, on behalf of the program. And a lot of beating myself up over how it wasn't working out. Somehow it was my fault (in my head) that there weren't enough volunteers for this ministry and because there weren't, then I had failed.

Until Sunday night. Stomach in knots, anxiety running high while my self worth was plummeting. I was doing what Dan hates -- beating myself up mentally over something that's not important or not my fault. If I had been in first grade I would have faked a fever (something I never did) but because I'm 24 and not in first grade, I had to figure out how to be an adult and "make it work." That's when the realization hit me. I had done the best that I could do. I didn't have anything that should call my worth into question. Yes, it's sad that this specialized ministry won't be around this year and yes, I'm upset at how this makes me look professionally. But truly, in the end, I had done the best I could do...I can't make people volunteer. I was given permission to fail.

I was also able to see the heart of my anxieties as well. I was beating myself up because I assumed that would be what people would do over this (not literally, again -- not in first grade). But if anyone was going to call my abilities and worth into question, it had might as well be me! It's been a weird road to walk down these last few weeks. Usually things work out for me and everything moves along swimmingly. This is one of those rare instances where nothing worked and I really didn't know what to do. The question of course is, so what did you learn from this? We do try to learn things also to justify our failures, don't we? But I did learn. I learned to not be so intimidated when asking for volunteers, I learned a bit more about discerning what the real messages are (when everyone says that they'd love to volunteer but the timing isn't right...and your deacon starts talking about being realistic about the ministries we can sustain at this time in our life, well...you start to get the picture of what God's doing behind the scenes. Maybe.) And I learned to give myself some slack. I haven't felt anxious about this since that Sunday realization. With the permission to fail, my mood shifted and my heart felt lighter. I knew that was the right decision and that I am adult enough to deal with the consequences.

Youth group starts tonight with an entirely different take on things. We're adding in new people and being intentional about how we use others. New volunteers are re/joining our ranks. It's going to be a great night. This is the stuff that I love to do. And I am thankful.