Saturday, September 28, 2019…my grandmother’s funeral.
My parent’s church served lunch to our family and friends that day. I’ve written about this before, but I will briefly recap.
My grandmother died early Monday, September 23, 2019. She had been sick since April. The family drama surrounding her death was intense. The years prior had been difficult for many reasons. My relationship with my grandmother had been challenging. After her cancer diagnosis and subsequent failing of health, God gave our family precious time to heal many of the wounds created in our hearts. Those last few months with my grandmother were beautiful but emotionally and mentally taxing.
By the time she passed away, I was spent. I had the busiest summer I had ever had as a children’s minister at Tree Town. I had surgery that year, had been sick several times, and was just exhausted. Adding in the mental and emotional energy my grandmother’s sickness caused, I was left in a place I had never been. I didn’t realize it then, but I was sick and so very tired… I was tired and physically exhausted. The doctors said that my blood work results were all over the place, and I was experiencing gastro issues I had never dealt with before, and although I had repeated tests, the doctors couldn’t figure out what was going on with me.
My body was tired… but more than that, my mind was tired. I was tired of working, I was tired of trying to please this pastor with my job performance, I was tired of being underpaid and overworked, I was tired of the schedule I had been given, I was tired of trying to achieve a certain number of salvations and baptisms within my ministry to keep my goals, I was tired of evaluations, I was tired of my job, I was just tired, and that exhaustion eventually led to physical issues and also mental ones. And I didn’t recognize it at the time. I maintained that my busy schedule had just left me temporarily tired, and I would soon regain my love and energy for children’s ministry.
I sat at the table that day as my parent’s church served our lunch.
In that room was an aunt who had backed a U-Haul truck up to my grandmother’s house two days after she passed away and loaded every single item into it, giving us no chance to get anything that held memories for us. This included my parents. They had to sit back and watch as she emptied the contents of my grandmother’s house without ever asking them if they would like to have anything. In that room sat my uncle, who had abused this aunt for many years. An uncle who sat in the room while my grandmother passed away, looking like he wanted her to hurry up and die because he couldn’t wait to receive his inheritance. That room was filled with people I loved and many who caused me tremendous stress.
The funeral itself was set to be stressful as my aunt wouldn’t communicate with my dad. The room felt like a ticking time bomb. One misplaced word could set the whole family off, and then this day would be ruined, and my grandmother deserved a beautiful memorial service, not a family feud.
So, to offset the stress that day, I invited my pastor, my friend, to eat with us. A familiar friend outside the family would be a welcome distraction and comfort.
Don’t forget, in September 2019, we counted this pastor as one of our very best friends. That entire week we had talked, texted, and kept in touch… he knew what was going on with the family in detail. This was also the same week I led See You at the Pole and received my $300 hush money. I’m not sure if I was in denial about this pastor’s friendship or if I was just trying to make the best of things.
But my guard was beginning to go up, and I didn’t realize how much until we sat down to eat lunch with him at the funeral that day.
I was just starting to toy with the thoughts that maybe it was time for me to quit my job, that maybe there were issues with this pastor I thought was my friend. I wasn’t ready to vocalize those feelings, but they were beginning to settle in my mind. I didn’t want to question his friendship, I needed our friendship to be genuine…
And as we sat there that day, he began to tell me why it was vital that I be in church that very next day… I needed to get back to work. I had been gone long enough, people needed to see me there, and I needed to attend a mission meeting. I needed to give a report at the business meeting that next evening.
As I look back, I think I have a perspective I didn’t have that day. This pastor’s grandmother passed away while I worked at the church. He got the news, told no one, and continued to work. It was several hours later that he finally told us that she passed away. He showed very little emotion, and I think he expected the same from the people who worked for him. It has been said that narcissists try to boost their self-confidence by imagining that they’re completely self-sufficient and unaffected by feelings. They don’t like to feel vulnerable.
I couldn’t take anymore, but I didn’t say anything out of respect that he was my boss and out of fear that if the damn broke, there would be no way to stop. My heart was broken for my grandmother. To add to things, it was broken because I obviously wouldn’t have any time to recover. It was time to return to work, this was the focus of my boss/friend/pastor even before I buried my grandmother.
My mind had too many things racing through it in those moments to grasp all that I felt. But all that the pastor said was at the forefront of my mind enough that it affected my answer when…
We stood in the foyer with the entire family, waiting to go inside the worship center to my grandmother’s funeral. My parent’s pastor and his wife were standing with us. They could tell that I was pretty stressed. His wife came over and gave me a hug.
To distract me from all the craziness around me, she began to talk to me about something completely different than anything happening in that moment; she said, “have you ever thought about being a missionary?” My daughter stood beside me. We looked at one another and said no, not really. The pastor chimed in and said that we had been on their minds. My parent’s church was planting another church in a town about an hour and a half away. He continued to explain that they were hoping to put together a team of people who could rotate, and one week out of every month, each group could lead worship in this church plant.
This would be a short commitment until they could assemble a team of people from that area once the church was on its feet. He knew we liked to sing, he knew that my son played guitar. This was actually something we could do in theory, but in reality, it was impossible.
I looked at him and told him that he didn’t understand. I was on staff at a church, and there was no way they would give me the clearance to miss one Sunday every month. In fact, I told him I was in trouble at that moment for having missed as much as I already had, and the pastor had just reminded me of everything I needed to get back to do.
My parent’s pastor assured me he understood and told me to pray about it. He would appreciate it even if we could only go a few times to lead worship. It didn’t need to be a solid commitment, there was no pressure, and the opportunity was there if we decided it was something we might want to do.
His distraction worked that day. It kept me from saying something to any family member that might have caused sparks to fly and tempers to flare.
We continued that day with my grandmother’s funeral. It was a long, emotional day for our entire family.
I didn’t go to church the next day. The pastor later stated that he was disappointed in me for not doing so.
You can read all about that in an earlier blog post.
I did go to staff meeting that following Monday morning.
Shortly thereafter, everything fell apart.
God clearly showed me that I needed to quit.
I went through the process, and as I’ve stated before, I walked out of Tree Town Baptist on December 29, 2019, and never returned. That was never my plan, but circumstances prevented us from returning. More importantly, I will always feel that God used those circumstances to show us a way out.
January 2020, February 2020, March 2020… always planning to return to Tree Town… by the end of March, we all but knew we couldn’t go back in the same capacity we had hoped. By May 2020, we were concrete in our decision.
By this time, Covid had the world shut down. It was easy to slip away. The last service we even contemplated attending was the Easter Drive-In service. If I recall correctly, that service was canceled because of the weather… I think we had already talked ourselves out of it anyway.
Let’s step back to 2019 for a second. When I told my daughter in October of 2019 that I was quitting, one of her first questions was if we could now entertain the idea of leading worship once a month at this church plant like my parent’s pastor had asked us. I quickly told her that I felt like since I wasn’t on staff anymore, we could easily be gone once per month to do this. She was extremely excited about this possibility.
At that time, our plans were to continue attending Tree Town, my husband and I had been asked and had agreed to start teaching a college-age class at Tree Town. In addition, I was signed up to chaperone several youth trips and go to Honduras for a mission trip in June 2020. So, we weren’t planning to lead worship in this church plant very often, just occasionally. And we felt good about it. It was a way to continue our ministries at Tree Town, attend and be a part and still branch out and help this church plant.
As the months went on, our plans began to change. My husband and I saw that we could no longer be as involved at Tree Town as we once were. So our new plan was to remain at Tree Town as attendees only, get involved as little as possible but stay until our daughter graduated to keep her involved at Tree Town in her Junior and Senior years.
And as the months continued, we realized that any involvement at Tree Town, at least for Jeremy and me, was an impossibility. Especially after the pastor sat at our house and told us, we needed to decide if we were all in or all out. When he left that day and told us that everything between us was good, no matter what decision we made, and then never contacted us again… Jeremy and I realized pretty quick that this wasn’t a pastor or friend we could trust. His actions didn’t match his words.
Our son was in college and could make his own decisions about attending. However, our daughter planned to continue being a part of the youth program at Tree Town until she graduated.
As you probably know, if you’ve been following the blog, even my daughter staying to be a part of the youth program became impossible.
Each and every one of those decisions was painful; Gruelingly so. We spent hours and hours in prayer, study, and family conversations… tears, sobs, depression, anxiety… it was intensely painful.
I’ve often said that God showed us His plan just one thing at a time. It was as if He was asking, “Do you trust Me?” and then again, “Do you trust Me?”… looking back, it’s plain to see, but walking through it tore me apart. It was a lesson in trust, one that I needed.
When we decided never to return to Tree Town in any capacity… when the relationships there began to fall apart, we started to see that God had an entirely different plan for us… we intentionally stopped everything to listen to Him.
We didn’t look for a church or attend church in person for many weeks after we made the decision to leave Tree Town…Covid allowed us this luxury, and we embraced it. Although my “friends” ridiculed this decision, telling me it was most important for us to find a new church home as quickly as possible, I disagreed. I knew this was what God wanted us to do.
As a family, we decided that for the remainder of 2020, we wouldn’t make any decisions pertaining to church. We wouldn’t seriously visit a church. We wouldn’t walk an aisle, sign on a dotted line or commit to anything. That would give us one year outside of a church environment to think, reflect and listen.
In early November 2020, my parent’s pastor asked if he could come to speak to us about the church plant. We agreed, but before he arrived, we again reiterated privately in a meeting as a family that we would only commit to something once that entire year had passed.
What would we do if this church plant was to begin in November or December of 2020? Would we pass up this opportunity… yes, we had promised God an entire year, and if this was their plan, then we couldn’t do it.
My parent’s pastor came to our house and sat down. He began to tell us that because of Covid, the church plant was behind schedule for an entire year. They hoped to be up and running by spring 2020, but that had changed. Even though they had been working during that year, they were way off track. Covid had slowed the process considerably.
He asked us to pray and consider if we wanted to be a part of this church plant. I asked him when they planned to begin, and I nearly fell out of my chair when he told me they wouldn’t start anything until late January 2021. That meant the year we had promised to avoid making any commitments would be passed. This was something we could consider.
God speaks in mysterious ways. Something a pastor and his wife said in passing, in the foyer of a church before my grandmother’s funeral… at a time that I hadn’t even seriously considered quitting my job… when I could see nothing in my future except growing old at Tree Town Baptist… God spoke in a tiny little sentence… “have you ever thought about being a missionary”…
Part 2 coming next week…
Until Next Time,
Whitney
