I can't believe I've been with this job for more than a year now! I was so sure it was just a 5 month internship...how silly of me : ) This has been the most incredible job of life. There are a million and a half stories that I know I will tell for the rest of my life. Traveling the country and meeting different people and working on projects that are so outside of my job description. I hope that I will back on it with joy and not with all of the frustration that it has also brought about. I think that i'm actually ready to move on after this stint. I won't be done for another 6 months still and I'm hoping by that point that I will be sufficiently ready to go. I'm sure it will be painful to leave- i've built a life her, with some great mentors and friends- but i'm excited for what the future has in store. Once I decided to sign on for an actual staff position I figured I would stay another year, but I also kind of figured I would just stay on until God showed me the next step. I kind of figured that once you work in ministry that that's all you can do now. that I would have to find a similar ministry back West in order to leave this one. I mean this job was one of those moments where God grabbed me by the shoulders and pointed me in this direction and said "go." So I went, and it seemed like in order to leave it I would have to be doing something more incredible, because how do you leave something that you were destined to do. But i'm realizing that leaving doesn't always mean leaving. and the best for me doesn't neccesarily mean staying her. I love this ministry and what it stands for and what it teaches and the way it teaches but i have never loved office work and i have never loved the disorganization of this "organization."
I'm learning that God does give you the desires of your heart. He gives you these desires and then He fullfills them right before your eyes. (as i'm writing this my heart is swelling with love for Him...I can't believe that He loves me this much, that He romances me this way...I can't believe that He fullfills my desires!) I mean I did really want to come back, i knew my work wasn't finished here and in December I knew I wasn't done yet. I want to go to Ecuador I want to do this tour.
Sidetrack--I don't particularly love the folks I'm touring with but I think I need to allow them to redeem themselves, we all need to grow and mature and I need to grow and mature in the let them grow and mature way haha sometimes it's hard to actually forgive when you forgive but i think next month I will figure out how, i'll either pass or fail and in the end i'll know what that should look like lol
but now i'm sure this is how it needs to be. It's like when i thought i would be done with camp but then the next summer i knew i needed one more summer. this year i didn't work there and it was hard, i wanted to be there, but i knew it was right not to be. and they had an unbelieveable summer up there, it wouldn't have been the same if i had been there. and now i see how efficient jacqueline is at this job and i realize that it's ok for me to leave. that someone (whether it's her or not) can fill this spot and take it further than i did. and it doesn't mean that i did and ineffective job or that i wasn't good enough at it, it means i took it to a certain spot and now it's time to pass the baton to the next runner becasue i'm getting weary.
I don't officially know what lies ahead for me. there've been a lot of open doors lately and it's looking really good. but i've seen doors open before and sprinted to go through them and they've closed again before i got there. I dont' know if that's because i over take the plans and take too much initiative or if the open door was simply a lesson that there are other options that there are doors to be opened, etc. Either way i'm struggling not to take hold of this plan as well. first things first i need to talk with my boss's about leaving at the end of this contract and what that will look like.
we'll see...either way i'm giddy