I’m beginning to think that I am a fair weather friend to God.  When life throws punches, I want to duck, crawl under the covers, and go to sleep until the prizefighter goes away.  I want the Lord to fix everything for me…but he doesn’t.  At least not Right.Now.

Perhaps this blog would be better titled “NeverFaith” rather than “EverFaith,” at least today.  I am at the bottom of a pit.  Eighty people are depending on me to do something that I don’t know how to do.  Even if I knew how to do it, I don’t WANT to do it.  I want to educate my daughter.  I want to snuggle on the couch with her and read up about Texas History and the Magna Carta.  Instead I left her alone with her math and sit here fuming because my Classical Conversations community has no home.  The rug has been pulled out from under us…and as “fearless leader,” everyone looks to me to find us another facility.

I’m trying to pray about it and give it to the Lord.  Truly, that’s what I tell myself that I’m doing.  But really I sit here and fume.  Every time I start to worry, I try to insert an appropriate Bible verse into my head….about everything working out for the good of those who are in Christ Jesus.  That doesn’t change the fact that this headache is intruding on my life in an enormous way.  I am feeling the beginnings of resentment stirring up inside me….not at any person in particular, but at the time, the stress, the worry.

When I look back on my life, I see periods where I shine brightly and then tend to flame out.  I have brief stints of leadership before I go back into a cave.   For example…

I was a preschool director at a church.  When I began to feel burned out, the Lord placed a job opportunity for my husband in our laps that was all the way across the country in Baltimore.  We took the open door, so I had a legitimate reason to close that preschool director door.

Fast forward to Florida, when I became the president of the PTA at my daughter’s private Christian school.  I computerized the school lunch ordering system and lobbied the city to put school speed zones up in front of the school.  We had a penny drive that raised over $1300 for orphans through Samaritan’s Purse.  We worked on teacher appreciation banquets and the school book fair.  At the end of the year, when a job opportunity presented itself back in Texas, I leaped at the chance not just because I wanted to move back home, but because I was severely burned out.  Moving was an effective way to close that door.

Since we’ve been here in Texas, I again find myself on the cusp of burning out.  I was the newsletter editor for a homeschooling association for about a a year, and then I resigned.  The stress of sitting at the computer for such long hours led to severe neck pain.  So, the medical troubles gave me the “out.”

Now I’ve been the director of a CC community for a little over a year, and at this moment I am so burned out that I’ve turned to ash.  Pieces of me float away on the breeze.  I’m surprised those around me can’t smell the smoke from my flamed-out state!  Yet outwardly I continue to smile and encourage others…while inwardly I am in desperate need of encouragement.  I need to be reminded WHY I am doing this task…not for myself, but for the Lord.  I need to be renewed.  Instead I have ceilings falling down, supplies that might as well be burned up, a facility that might take weeks, if not months, to repair, and a growing list of churches that would like to have us but want us to pay “small” building use fees.  (Their definition of small and my CC budget are vastly different.)

I guess if we don’t have a facility by next week,  I could hold classes in my home.  But the private side of me, the side of me that is already burned out and craves alone time and quiet, balks at the thought of 55 elementary, 15 nursery, and 13 junior high kids and their parents taking over my home.  I’d be paralyzed at the thought of all the germs hitching rides on the bodies of the little children, invading my house.  It’s hard enough for my germaphobic self to go out in public, much less bring the public here in such large numbers.  I feel a panic attack coming on!

My husband told me to call a hotel and book some meeting rooms for next week, just in case.  He said he would foot the bill.  But a part of me feels that doing that would be squashing whatever it is that the Lord is trying to do in this situation.

Speaking of that, what IS the Lord doing?  Why are we facing these trials in our second year as a community?

Last night my daughter came to me and sat next to me.  She said she didn’t need anything…she just wanted Mommy.  I feel that way, too.  I wish I could run away to my mom in dad in East Texas and let them take care of me.  Let someone else worry about what’s for dinner and put the worries about CC out of my mind.

I need to do something, though, because my attitude is way beyond BAD this afternoon, and I am ready for the cave.  I pray that the Lord will renew my mind. I know He is good.  I know He knows my needs and the needs of my CC community.  And I also know that His timing is best.  I pray He will work a change in me this afternoon so my “NeverFaith” attitude goes back to “EverFaith” before I completely flame out into a darkened mass of quivering ash.