Almost There

Another Friday at long last is on the horizon.  Thanks for the comments.  Not sure what was up with them but they seem to be coming through now.  Jimnotmike, sorry about the lack of being able to type your given-by-me name, but the peace of mind I have here now is so worth it.  The other blog is now completely gone and it makes me moderately happy at the thought that some people were probably annoyed by that.

The Brit is home for a week hopefully, though he may have to go to Chicago next week.  Ugh.  I know the travelling needs to be done right now and it is generally fine and it would be more than fine if this church crap would just completely blow over.  There is another council meeting Monday night and I think some crap is going to go down on my behalf.  Out of all the people who know what happened, I have some big guns on my side.  I hate thinking of it as "sides" though.  The people on the "other side" only had half a story that the Busman gave to them after adding his own special twist to it, and then they were too upset to hear the real story.  I think I am changing the Bus Man's name to The Puppet Master because that is how he operates.  He pulls strings and gets other people to do his dirty work, while he just sits back and watches it all unfold.  The Puppet Master does not think like ordinary people.  Rumor has it he was asked to resign from his last job (he is in the retirement age catagory now) and he was just asked to leave another organization, so there are lots of issues.  I am just his latest victim.  I know in the big scheme of things, this is not that big a deal but yet in some ways it is.

The other troublesome thing for me is that someone I considered one of my closest friends, the music director, has not called me and I have not spoken to her since we sang at that dinner almost two weeks ago.  This could be due to a few possibilities:

1. She is not one to pursue friendships.  It is nothing for her to just not bother calling people which is why she has very few friends.
2. Beings she is not very internet savey, she may feel that this whole thing is my fault because I blogged.
3. being another employee of the church she may be worried they will come after her next so she does not want to be seen with "the enemy."
4. She blames me because she is concerned the church could fold and with that would go her job.  The church is struggling anyway and now we have left and my mother has left...and there could be more unless this thing gets turned around.

So, this whole thing has been one giant hurt on top of another.

I am reading this book called "When God's People Let You Down" and the way I feel is best described by this paragraph so far:

"No sane army commander looks out across a battlefield, sees his men shot and dying in dirt and blood but says to the medics, "Forget these guys.  There's more where they came from." Too many Christians feel like good soldiers wounded in action-and the leaders and fellow soldiers who were supposed to notice and help  have ignored them.  What an added insult!  You find yourself blamed for getting hurt in the first place."

Are People Actually here?

Lack of comments makes me wonder if we are working here.

Today was a bad one.  This has all been like a giant roller coaster, some days are great, others horrible with no special reason why the bad ones are bad.  I had trouble sleeping again last night, thinking about giving up my Tuesday nights and how impossible it would be as I had just given up two impossible things and thinking about those things got me all emotional today again over the loss of the  youth group and praise band.  I know I will survive these things as sure as I know I will not be returning to them, but now, it is still difficult.  I know I am a survivor; I have been my entire life, but right now, I am still in a valley.  I keep thinking of the line to that Christian song which I'm sure is also a Bible verse: Strength will come as we wait upon the Lord.  I'm waiting.  I know there is a plan and it will be perfect. 

I could not bring myself to go to the gym today as I was in too bad a funk, so I came home and raked 11 bags of leaves from the backyard.  Believe it or not, it really helped my frame of mind.  It was a visible accomplishment and I was in the mood at the time to be alone.  Then tonight, I walked a few miles with Tod, which allowed me to blow off some steam to him.  The Brit has been away a lot the last two weeks and I am kind of over it right now, but having Tod around does help.

I came to the realization that I have a 5K to run Thanksgiving morning and I have not run in weeks.  Should be interesting!

Torn!

Okay, it's not like they have made me an offer or anything yet but I have a really good feeling after today's interview.  It is part time, two days a week, Tuesday and Wednesdays from 9:30-6:00, with the possibility of adding Thursday eventually.  It pays better than I am making now and technically, if I wanted to, I could continue working at the church with less hours and work both places.  This office services people with limited incomes, they do work with the homeless shelter, all kinds of stuff that totally matters to me.

The problem?  I don't know if I can bear to give up my kickboxing class. How insane is that?  I was thinking about it on the way home from class tonight and  I was hit with the realization that I just didn't know if I could give it up.  It's so much more than my GBC too.  Kickboxing has helped transform who I am.  It makes me feel stronger than I ever thought I could feel.  It's my one workout a week that is in a group and I love that part of it too.  It has just made me feel so confident in so many other aspects of my life.

Maybe it is also because I have had to give up too many other things lately that I love.  I had to give up my youth kids and the praise band and my church and I am still dealing with these hurts.  I'm not sure giving up anything else right now that I love is an option.  Sure, I could do it if I had to, but I am not at the point that I have to.

So do I wait to see if they offer me the job and then ask if there is any way around this?  Have I lost my mind?   

I Don't Like Mondays

With not attending my former church on Sunday, it makes Mondays a bit of a concern for me.  The current situation leaves me never knowing what might have been said over the course of the weekend.  So this morning, the wife of one of the council members who is on my team, came in to speak with the pastor about the freak who threw me under the bus.  Their discussion lasted almost two hours and she told me after the fact she had told the pastor that if someone didn't stop this man from causing her friends to leave the church she might kill him.  Yes, our Christian attitude remains.  Then her husband and two of my self titled "Wise men" of the church got together to brain storm.  They don't want The One Who Threw Me Under the Bus (now known as BusMan) to become council president in the new year, which means one of them has to agree to do it and the rest of the majority will second it.  

Then the Twisted VP came in asking me questions including if I had an employee handbook she could see.  I explained to her that the parish admin had it and that really annoyed her. So, is she still trying to come up with a way to fire me?

One of my wise men called from the meeting and asked me if I was leaving them.  The convo went something like this:

Me: Leaving the church or leaving as your secretary?

Him: As our secretary.

Me: I don't know but I won't lie to you and tell you I'm not looking.

Him: I can understand that.  I would like to ask you to give us a little time to try to fix this.  It never should have happened.  I am sick about it.  I am sick that I was away for these meetings.  My wife is sick about  it.

Me:  You and I both know the economy is crap, but I am keeping an eye on the paper.  That's all I can promise you right now.

He understood completely.  It's good to know that there are truly good people out there amongst some, who, though not bad, are maybe confused?  The Wise Man told me that one of the people who are angry with me said that I had said to them " I am not a Lutheran.  I am a Christian."  He asked me to confirm what I said.  What I said was "I am a Lutheran because I have always been a Lutheran, but before I am a Lutheran, I am a Christian, because I am a follower of Christ."

I don't get it.  Why do they twist my words?  I never said I was not a Lutheran or that I didn't care that I was a Lutheran.  Jesus was not a Lutheran.  Would that bother them?

Anyway, another interview tomorrow at another dental office and I have to take a dental terminology test first.  If I don't get enough right, I don't get the interview, so I need to get my butt of the blog and relearn how to study.

Apologies

I still feel like I am trying to get back to normal.  There are still lingering hits on the old blog and I feel both satisfied and upset that I even had to close it because of two people who felt it was their....right?....responsibility?...to pass on my blog post to other people.  There is still tension at the church but most of the rumblings are from those disgruntled with what these other two people did.  See, the last time four people left our this congregation, it was because of these same two people essentially.  Some of it could have been blamed on my mother, but she was set up by the two crap stirrers.  But what do you do with these kinds of people?  It's not like you can fire them from the congregation, right?

Anyway, went to the gym again today and went through the agonizing workout that has left my thighs aching for the last three days (after doing it Wednesday too).  But I do feel so much stronger in so many aspects of my life after a really good workout.  Sorry, Jimnotmike, but low carbing doesn't do that for me...only exercise ;)  I've been wimping out on the elliptical and stupid rowing machine though and have opted to just run the sprints each time.  Of course I have a Turkey Trot coming up in a few weeks and have not done any running to speak of in weeks!  Yeah, that run will go well.

Okay, have a happy weekend.  I plan on chilling out and then hitting another church on Sunday.  Hope you all have something fun to do and maybe our paths will even cross.

All Moved Over

So here we are!

Had a job interview today for a dental office. I was really excited about the interview but then once the interview was over, I think they were more excited about me than I was about them.

The main administrative office where they interviewed me was a mess. We are talking stacks and stacks of papers strewn everywhere, dirty dishes lying around on limited desktop space, just a disaster area. The two dentists are indian, which is fine. The hours are Monday through Friday, with two of those days being till seven in the evening, and then every other Saturday 9-2 and when you work the Saturday, you have off the Friday. But there are no benefits at all. Nada. No paid sick time, no paid holiday time, no paid vacation time, no health benefits. They are looking to pay about twelve bucks an hour with no added anything. I am all about laid back, but this place was too much so; there just didn't seem to be anything professional about it. So if they offer it to me, I am going to decline. It was just not a good fit and as much as I want to get as far as possible away from the church, it needs to be right.

The church is what it is right now. I fear for the place to fall apart, and not because I am leaving. But because the people who threw me under the bus are notorious trouble makers. They seem nice and sweet but they throw a mean punch when the mood hits them and I have to wonder if the retired of the world just don't remember how the real world works. They have far too much not just to read my blog, but to try to decide what cryptic messages I am trying to convey (and there were no cryptic messages...I was just trying to decide if it was time to leave my church...not take it over and make it non-denominational, which is what I have more or less been accused of. Insanity).

I am just making every effort to be pleasant to people while I am there but the problem is that the ones who are in during the week most often are most of the ones I am put out with. The VP does seem to be on speaking terms with me again, at least today. Tomorrow could be a different story but who cares? Tomorrow is Friday!

I am still working on sprucing up our new home here. Laura got the posts transferred over (don't tell her mama, as they are mad at me!) but we couldn't get all the comments for some reason. I left my final post on the godaddy account tonight and if you haven't seen it, it simply says:


This blog has been moved to a private domain, where only those who received the email with the information two weeks ago, are able to view it. Some folks were invited into my "virtual living room" and then decided they didn't like my feelings. Right or wrong, those feelings belong to me and no one has the right to judge them. This blog has always been my safe place to stay in contact with my family and friends; the people who truly care about me. I was wrong about some people, but we all live and learn, sadly. But life also goes on and my blog has been returned to me and those who love me.

If you believe you should have had an invitation, you will need to friend me on Facebook to request one. I gave the information to my friends who have always followed my blog and to those friends who left me comments.

So as I have always loved quoting songs, I leave you with a line from one of my favorites, from Wicked's "Defying Gravity".

"Too long I've been afraid of
Losing love, I guess I've lost
Well if that's love
It comes at much too high a cost"

The comments are not open for this post. It is simply a farewell and I will see most of you in our new home.

I guess some of those folks will just have to go back to checking books out of the library if they want something to read.

Welcome to Our New Home

So here is what is happening tomorrow:

My friend and Blogger wiz, Laura, is coming over here late in the afternoon to transfer all the posts from my other blog to this blog.  The other blog is going to go away.  The church people who in their special way, seem to hate me, are all over the other blog still.  I don't think they all are, but there are still far too many hits coming over there than is the norm.  The only way I can make them leave it alone is for it to go away.  If any of you here, know of anyone else who used to read the other blog and was not invited here, please let me know.  When I did my invite list for this blog, I went by my comments section to see who read and commented.  I am sure I have readers who do not comment and for them, I am sorry, but I cannot have the blog being public right now.  Once I have a new job, I will probably make this one public but until then, it can't happen.

I found out today who threw me under the bus.  Everytime I think I have my feelings about this under control, I find out something new.  The Brit resigned last night and apparently after he left, the whole story came out.  A member of the church and his wife didn't like the blog post and pulled another member of council into it.  The thing is that out of the seven people who are so twisted at me and The Brit right now, these two people have been the nicest!  I think she knew today when I was leaving tho, that I knew it was she and her husband. I was just trying to get out the door and she stopped me and said "Give me a hug."

I guess she was hoping to drive the knife in deeper.  Unbelievable.

I am not sure how any of this for the church is going to end up.  I don't want them to fall, and they didn't the first time there was trouble (this couple was right smack in the middle of that mess too.  Go figure.  Though the folks that left in that split had definite issues in their way of thinking, I was there but not in the midst of the mess.  This couple seems to thrive there) so hopefully they will survive this mess too.  But lots of people are still upset on "both sides" (I hate the sides thing.  shouldn't we all be on the same side?) and that is never a good thing.  Someone tell me that there are normal churches out there that don't have drama every five years?