"Hate your Father and Mother."

This past Sunday I looked over during worship and saw one of our friends with his grandson. They both had the biggest smiles on their faces. It was the cutest thing, and while I was filled with joy at watching them, my heart sunk. I SO LONG for that to be Eden and her grandparents!

But a thought occurred to me as I watched them and wallowed in my longing. It was almost audible.

"Hate your Father and Mother."

Which I acknowledged as a reference to Luke 14:26.

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. (ESV)

I have always had difficulty with the verse because I love so deeply. I understood it as in comparison to my love of Christ my love of my family looks like hate, but it always bothered me a little.

But sitting there in the "pew" chair feeling sad that I wasn't closer to family, I had a realization of what that verse meant. Doing ministry is almost equivalent to "hating" my father and mother.

God has us here in this place for a specific reason. He has a plan for us, and that plan has us here. Tanner is now Ministry Leader of the Youth and is working alongside of the Youth Minister while he works on his Bible degree through Harding University's online program. I am still involved with the youth and the women's ministry as much as I can be with our delightful baby girl.

I can not do what God has called me to do if I am caught up in longing to be somewhere else. If I am preoccupied with wishing that I lived closer to my parents (or his parents), I can not spread the love of Christ to those around me.

So, as much as I want to be closer to my family, I will be happy with the times I can see them and choose to focus on where I am and what God has for me to do. He put me here for a reason and I know he has big plans for me and my family. I just have to remember to focus on HIM first so that he can use me to spread his Kingdom.

Another New Chapter

On October 5th, 2018, a new chapter of my life started; the chapter titled "Mom".

On November 30th, 2018, I opened a sub-chapter: "Working Mom".

As of February 1st, 2019, I start yet another new sub-chapter: "Stay at Home Mom".

Honestly, it's a lot of changes in such a short amount of time! I LOVE being Eden's mom, and I am very excited to be able to give her my full attention every day. (Not to mention, the house will be in better shape and we might actually get to have people over! :P ) But there is a part of me that is grieving a little.

I've been the Office Manager at Riverside for the past 4 years. FOUR YEARS! It's the longest I've ever held a job and I have loved it. So, leaving it, without moving or anything, has been a harder pill to swallow than I thought it would be. I know that the decision to stay home with my baby girl is the absolute best decision, and I will never regret it. She is the most important and the very best job I will ever have. I just find myself needing to grieve end of my Office Manager chapter.

Being that my personality is what it is (a social enneagram 4 with a 5 wing for those of you who know the enneagram), I struggle with the concept of identity. So for the past four years, Office Manager at Riverside Church of Christ has just been such a large part of my identity that I'm struggling a little to make the shift of it no longer being part of my identity at all. I find myself wondering who I am (besides Tanner's wife and Eden's mother), and where I fit in the world now.

On the other hand, I feel shame for feeling the need to grieve. Like I said earlier, being home with Eden and being able to give her my full attention all day is the best thing I will ever do. It's the best decision I will ever make. Being her mom is the most important job I will ever have. So, I find myself feeling like I shouldn't be sad at all that I am leaving my job at Riverside. I should be only ecstatic that I get to be home with my little girl!

I think it's that I really didn't expect to feel sad. I didn't expect to need to grieve. I thought that I would only be excited to begin my career as a stay at home mom. So this sadness just hit me like a ton of bricks, and I've been suffocating under it's weight, trying to reconcile the feeling ever since.

The new Office Manager is going to do a fantastic job. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that God planned this all out perfectly. There is no other way to explain it all. I just have to come to terms with these feelings, grieve the ending of one chapter and celebrate the beginning of a new one. I have to tell myself that it's okay to grieve the ending of a chapter. As long as I don't forget to celebrate the beginning of the new one. Because the last chapter was a wonderful chapter, and this new one is going to be a GREAT chapter.