Fresh Air

Well this feels awfully familiar.

I guess you can tell that I am talking about coaching for a week at my home church. Two things, though.

First is that it feels a little strange to be coaching in the same place that I've been volunteering for the past few years. I try my best not to, but there's naturally a bit of self-entitlement that comes with being here. If you gave me a choice, I probably would have said that I'd prefer not to coach in my home church for this very reason. But regardless of what I think, this is reality. So I'll deal with it. If anything, this only assures me that I will never pastor at my home church, even if it is a last destination type of pastoring. It makes me somewhat sad because no matter where I go, North Edmonton Alliance is my home church and will probably be the church I attend whenever I am in Edmonton. But I do know that it is probably in everyone's best interest that I would never have a future there as a minister. And at the same time, it is not really up to me; if God wants me here, then I'll come here. Realistically speaking though, it's probably not going to happen. However, don't get me wrong, I am very stoked that I do get to work at my home church and it's very exciting for me to see so many kids.

On a side note, we were able to go outside today despite the bad weather. We didn't really have rain until after lunch when it drizzled a little bit but wasn't bad enough that we had to go inside. Hopes are that the rest of the week are at least as good as today, if not better!

Second thing that seems awfully familiar is what is going on inside of me. I mentioned many times before that this summer was going to be spiritually challenging. Especially since I brought four kids to Christ last week, Satan is not going to like that. So over the past few days, I've felt emotionally crappy. I'm not trying to, but some things that are happening are making me question who I am again. It's been talked about that in my past, what lead to the lowest point in my life was my lack of self-esteem and confidence. So since that was an area of weakness, why not attack that again?

A few years ago, I was at a point in my life where I thought that I needed to change who I am in order to fit in more and have people like me better. I don't remember what the end result was, but I can assure you that the entire process of it was not fun to go through. For some reason, I'm at that point again. I'm not doing it on purpose, and I know people respect me for who I am - even though I'm still so immature - but the thoughts are resurfacing and causing me to doubt my personality. Not cool.

But all of this doesn't mean bad things though, I feel. Because I know I need to be a much more mature person as I am now a bit older. I can't act like a child in many aspects of life anymore, so it's good that all this evaluation of my personal character will help me in becoming stronger as a person and more confident in who I am. I love that God has been putting me in situations where eyes are on me over the last year, and it allows me to be more aware of the image that I put on because I know what I want people to see when they look at me.

So the good thing is that I can finally see where my spiritual life is heading, or where it needs to go, over the next little while. Once I am more mature, I will be able to relate to people better and hopefully be able to develop some really strong relationships.

That's the goal.