I’m sitting in my hotel room on my last night in Branson with my mom.
We’ve had the absolute best time. We’ve done all the things I said we would. We’ve shopped, gone out to eat, shopped some more, talked late into the night, done our hair and makeup, played card games, watched a movie, visited flea markets, ate our favorite breakfast every day, and shopped even more. Except for the cold weather, it has been a perfect week.
We’ve had time to have some long uninterrupted conversations. Of course, putting your phone down and spending time with someone is always good. But, unfortunately, in our everyday busy lives, we just don’t take the time to slow down in an undistracted way and have genuine conversations.
This week has been so good.
One of our conversations this week centered around my time at Tree Town Baptist. It’s something that comes up often with my family. My mom said something that has been on repeat in my mind.
No one person in your life is more protective than your mom, and my mom is no different. Moms will do anything to protect their children, even when they are adults. I understand this so much more now that my kids are grown. I would move heaven and earth to protect them. My mom would do the same for me.
In this particular conversation, we were discussing how long it had been since we’d been to Branson and all the factors that had kept us from being able to come. As I mentioned last week, those reasons are far more than my membership or my job at Tree Town Baptist. It has just been a very long 8 years for our family in so many ways.
But, as we discussed the job’s role in my busyness, my mom said, “that preacher almost killed you.”
This makes me chuckle a little because the irony is that I told the preacher I was resigning in November of 2019. He and his family were supposed to have Thanksgiving dinner that year with my entire family and my husband’s family just a few weeks later.
We had always opened our home to church staff members or anyone else that needed a place to spend holidays, even before I took the job. However, pastors have a hard time traveling home to be with their families for holidays and taking care of their responsibilities in the church. Because of that, they frequently need a place to spend holidays. So, on Thanksgiving 2019, the pastor and his family would be at our house.
And the pastor was a nervous wreck about it.
In a previous conversation, when I told him I was resigning from my position, I told him that even when I couldn’t see that I needed to quit my job, my parents had already seen it. I thought my parents would be shocked when I told them I would be quitting. But instead, both of my parents were thrilled. They had seen what it was doing to me physically and mentally, even when I could not.
The pastor took that to mean that my parents were probably angry with him. He was convinced that they would think that it was his fault, that they would think he was the one that hurt me.
I worked hard to convince him that he was more than welcome to spend Thanksgiving with us and that my parents loved him dearly. They were for sure not angry with him nor did they blame him for what I had been through.
Oops, I lied and didn’t know it.
The pastor came that year for Thanksgiving, and things went well on the surface. However, I would find out later that my parents would have liked nothing more than to punch him in the face that day. In fact, still to this day, when my mom does her grocery shopping in Tree Town, she looks for him. She would love to give him a piece of her mind.
Whether the pastor didn’t want to come that Thanksgiving Day because he was feeling guilty or just once again worried about what things would look like for him, I don’t know… but he was right… my parents weren’t a fan of him. In fact, I would learn much later that they had never been.
Anyway, back to my mom’s comment that the pastor almost killed me…
Moms are almost always right, but she was at least partially wrong this time.
I’ve had moments when I would wholeheartedly agree with the statement that this pastor almost killed me, but this week I can’t.
I believe the pastor actually saved me.
He saved me from so much.
He saved me from living my life for a church, from spending every waking hour working to help build the establishment.
And, he not only saved me because he clearly gave me all the reasons I needed to quit my job…
Nope, that’s not all…
The catalyst that the pastor helped create in my life started a chain reaction…
These past years of working through everything since leaving Tree Town Baptist, I realized that I had to quit so much more than just the job.
The pastor saved me from the pattern in which I found myself. The ministry pattern I would probably still be in today… living my life and using my gifts and talents for an organization more than for my Heavenly Father.
I found myself making changes…
I quit doing all the mundane tasks of church life… the things I did even before becoming a Children’s Minister.
No more Wednesday night church services… but instead, time at home with my family.
No more Sunday nights… but again, time at home with my family.
No more midweek projects or events.
No more saying yes to something because it’s for the church.
No more exhausting myself with church programs.
No more checking the boxes of “Christianity.”
No more reading my Bible and studying just because it was expected of me.
No more…
I have not only quit things, but I’ve found new things as well…
A new idea of what balance means.
A renewed energy and understanding of how important it is to spend time with my parents, my inlaws, and my extended family.
A new outlook on what ministry really is, what spiritual growth really looks like, what community means…
What it means to talk to God and study His word out of love, not duty.
I’ve learned what a loving pastor looks like.
I’ve learned that church can look different than I thought it did… and that it should look different.
I’ve learned that a church community doesn’t have to be a gang or a cult.
I’ve learned what true friendship really is.
I feel alive… I feel happy… I feel good…
So, momma, since you are almost always right, I guess in a roundabout way, you are right about this too… the pastor almost killed me… but ultimately what he did saved me.
Until Next Time,
Whitney