Not as Behind as I thought.

It has been a fly by the seat of my pants kinda week.  I had a schedule and despite the fact that I have not stuck to it, I am not that far behind.  When The Brit is away, I don't sleep as well; it takes me longer to fall asleep and I awaken far earlier than is normal for me.  Also judging by the circles under my eyes, I am PMSing, so I am sleep deprived and lacking in energy at the moment.  Yet I remain more or less on schedule even if I have indvertantly rearranged it.

I worked out with Sonia today and this one is brutal.  The last one now feels like cake, but I guess that is the point, huh?  Got home and finished decorating, then took The Genius and went to church as I am going to miss the next two Sundays.  Oddly enough, I had just gotten to the Y today and was warming up on the treadmill and saw this guy waving to me as he was leaving.  I was confused for a moment before I realized it was my new pastor.

Tomorrow, I cheat on my hair girl and then I am supposed to go run with Bebecca, who is a beginner runner....and it is freakin' cold outside!  I also need to call our alarm company to see if they can walk me through an adjustment again because the heat is setting off the system and we got a notice from the police again that we have used up our two "get out of jail free" cards and the next time the police are sent out, it will cost us $30.  We adjusted the kitchen one last year in the winter as the heat can set it off but it is happening again. 

Friday I am riding up to Kirk's college to see his roomie's senior project which is a series of plays he has written.  I am going with the music director and her hubby and I am wondering if the question of "are you ever coming back to church?" is going to come up.  I would imagine it will be hard to explain but I have been thinking about it.

When we left, I did not yet have in my mind the mentality of "I am never coming back."  But I also didn't expect to walk into a church I am growing to really enjoy.  I think in different stages of our lives, we feel different ways about God.  As teens or young adults, often we keep God at arm's length.  We want to know He is there but we want to do our own thing and not think about it too much.  As we get a little older, we need to be involved and we want to set the right example for our kids where God is concerned.  So we are there out of a sense of obligation.  Then we get a little older and we realize that at times life is hard and we need to rely on Someone more than just ourselves and we want to know as much about that Someone as we can.  I was there.  I was craving more knowledge; I wanted to be able to understand and know the words that could help me handle some of the things life was throwing at me.  I wanted to discuss these things with other people who were craving the same things.  I wanted to be led by someone who had been Called to serve.  The problem was that the pastor where I was, though Called, was not, in my opinion, leading anyone.

When the split happened five years ago, I was still in that obligation place.  Then we got Pastor Phil and he made me sit up and listen.  I started actively pursuing my faith.  A void I had not even realized I'd had started to be filled.  A year later, he was gone and we had the next one, who was so overly dramatic and a bit of a jerk in person.  He was nasty to me on a regular basis and by the time Sunday rolled around, I could barely look at him yet alone try to get anything out of his sermons and I NEVER would have even considered talking to him one on one.  Four months later, the problem was discovered; he was having an affair and had been caught and he was gone.  Our next interim, though a horrible sermon giver, was amazing one on one, so again, I started to get some of what my soul craved.   Most of the congregation didn't like her due to her lack of decent sermons but the employees loved her due to that one on one time during the week.  When she left, we got the current one and you know how that story goes.  With this one, I started to lose faith that there were "real" pastors out there other than retired ones. 

So when this all went down at church and I left "temporarily" God had something else in mind.  He had been nudging me for awhile and I been ignoring but He knew what I needed and led me to it but putting a few people in front of me to guide the way. 

But will this make sense to those I left behind?