Lately I have been thinking a lot about my job, why I'm doing youth ministry, why I'm doing it at Oakwood, and why God put me here where I am. Maybe it's just so I can get Tim through school so he can become what he was meant to be. Maybe it's so I can help specific people, but once that's done I can leave. I'm not seriously thinking about quitting, but it's been on my mind lately. Last night I had a dream that I was able to walk into church, worship, fellowship, and leave feeling rejuvenated rather than stressed. Oh how wonderful would that be?! To be able to be the type of Christian who is able to go to church on Sunday, be revived with the Spirit, go through the week in Christianly love, and show up to church again on Sunday just when you start being worn out... this is my dream! How wonderful would it be if church were a safe place for me, a sanctuary where I could shed the bitterness, the sin, the depravity of life, and instead find righteousness and holiness. Now church is the place I work, it's the place that causes my stress and my anxiety.
Don't get me wrong, I love youth group, I love organizing activities and being with the youth. I can't stand the bitterness of the leaders who are supposed to help me guide my youth on in their walk with Christ. Their bitterness is strangling me and putting stress on our friendships as well as on the working relationship I am to have with them. I honestly don't know what to do about that. Do I just say "your bitterness is strangling me"? How on earth would I ever say that?! I can't say that, so I suppose I'll just shut up and live with it.
My devotions this morning were on calling vs. vocation. The author of it (his name is Os... how odd), stressed that our calling and our vocation are separate. Our calling is to be in relationship with God. Our vocation is our purpose here on earth.Our purpose can change, one purpose can be fulfilled while we begin another. Our calling will never change. If we start saying our calling is our vocation then suddenly we start trying to find self-worth through our job rather than through God. We fall into the trap of locking our identity into our vocation rather than finding our identity in Christ. This is especially difficult for someone in the ministry. Our vocation is about God so everything to do with it should be of the utmost importance right? Wrong. What I do in my youth ministry is not as important as what I do in my life. My relationship with these youth is not as important as my relationship with God. It's not even as important as my relationship with my husband. I was warned once, by a veteran youth minister, to not think of my work as God's work. God does his own work, and even if he chooses to do it through me sometimes, my job is not so important as to interfere with the vows I made before God in my marriage. When I married Tim I made a vow before God, when I signed up to do this job I merely signed a contract between men and women.
I don't really know what I'm saying. I suppose I'm saying that though I don't want to quit this job, that I really do enjoy it (though too often recently it's been "I did enjoy it"), I'm feeling the flickering of burnout. I got an email yesterday with an attachment called "Leaders in Crisis: I Want to Quit" about youth ministry workers feeling the burnout. Burnout is so frequent in my profession, there is too much stress, too many responsibilities, and frankly, too much emotional work that leaks its way into the rest of your life. This little flyer I got laid out some steps to figure out if it's a true burnout or if it's something that is just calling for change in Spiritual life. The steps are to slow down, reconnect with God, identify the pain points, get outside perspective, and decide the next step. The problem is right now isn't exactly the time of year to slow down. My heart hurts. I think this stress is why my acid reflux has come back with such a strong force.
I need a break.
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