The Simple Life at Home: An Oops That God Used

5:45 AM | Posted by Lori ~ The Simple Life at Home | | Edit Post

We all know that there are no accidents, that God is sovereign, right? After all, I'm a good Presbyterian. Ok, well, I go to a Presbyterian church, but I never really refer to myself as a Presbyterian. I'm a Christian. I think denominational labels are divisive and silly. But I digress.

Anyways, as I mentioned here, Hubby and I have been rather frustrated with our in-home Bible study that we both lead and host. Several of you gave really thoughtful and helpful insights, for which I am truly grateful. I took them all into consideration and shared them with my hubby. After some prayer and discussion, we set a course of action. He thought the best move was to remove ourselves from leadership of the group and ask for someone else to take over leadership. This is a natural outflow of where our lives are right now - we've both kind of ramped up our careers (his=engineering, mine=homeschooling) and also an effect of the burnout we are feeling with the lack of commitment from most of the group.

So, the plan was for me to draft an email informing the group of this decision, which we would then pray over and polish. You already know where I'm going with this, don't you? So I work on the letter this afternoon and hit "Save." Since I didn't want it to accidentally go, I didn't put an addressee in and it bounced up an error message that I had to put it in to save it. So I put in the addressee list and hit the enter button. And I walk away.

When I come back a few minutes later, there's a message from one of our small group people. With no message title. About how she won't be able to lead either. Yes, that's right, the letter went out. No polishing, no praying, not even a signature at the end, for goodness' sake! I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and tried to call Hubby. He wasn't available. I try to call another friend, who's in the group and knew of our struggle. Not available. I'm feeling sick and panicky at this point.

End result is, Hubby loved what I had written, incomplete as it was. My friend wrote back a very supportive email. Another member wrote back some kind of facetious comment. But basically, it seems that no one is going to step up to lead the group so it probably will die a natural death. And I'm ok with that. As Jess said in her comment to the original message, "when stuff that used to bring me joy starts to feel really hard and not work as well, sometimes it can be a sign for me that the grace to do it is lifting." I really feel that's what is happening here; that God has done whatever he wanted with this group and now it's time to move on.

I am left feeling very relieved that we've dealt with it. A lot of resentment was building up and now I don't have to feel that way anymore. That's a real load off my mind and heart. God is good.

2 comments:

Leeann said...: I'm so glad you were able to get that off your chest, even if it wasn't quite in the way that you planned!

Leeann; August 15, 2007 at 6:37 AM
tammi said...: Isn't it amazing how God can use even our mistakes? I prayed for you after I read the post about your dilemma and frustrations, and I'm so glad you've received such a tangeible answer so soon. And that you're so at peace with it.; August 16, 2007 at 4:20 PM