When faced with challenges, what do you do? For me, I tend to start looking for things that make me feel like I did in the better/easier times. With the summer quickly approaching, I have started remembering when I first moved out the Colorado. Visit quaint fairs, getting out to the mountains to drive through the trees and navigate the switchbacks. I loved, when I was washing window, to keep on eye on the mountains for any weather patterns quickly approaching. When I worked hourly at OC's I had nights and weekends off, so I lived a "normal life."
Then I through myself back even further to when I was back on Long Island and worked like a "dawwg" sun up to sun down then spent the night hang with friends doing dumb things like jump the same two tracks in town with some one in the trunk. We went out to eat in fine diners forty-five to sixty minutes away, because they had the best cheese burger deluxe. Things like this keep me "youthful."
Amy and I were talking about "being older" and I said to here, I don't look, feel or act like a man who will be thirty-two years old. That's what is all about! Being a Teen Worker, as we are now called, means to have a spirituality that young adults what to be a part of. At the same time, how to interact with them must be relate-able and similar to how they view their peers. Which brings me to what has been going on in our lives.
With Herve and Janet leaving to San Antonio, Rob and Dawn are sliding into the role as Region Leaders and the church has just put Doug and Suzanne on staff. This move allowed for Wade and Debbie to exclusively lead the Youth Ministry (0-18). To mirror those changes, the other two couples leading the North Region Teens are moving on, one couple has been hired to lead a church in Vermont. This pretty much leaves Amy and I unprotected and has us "fighting on our own." The Youth Ministry has been restructured, sort of, to reflect the Movement's emphasis to making the Youth Ministry a Family Ministry and an extension of the Marrieds Ministry.
That means a married couple is making sure the spiritual well being of the families and Teen Workers are being taken care of. The Chisolms have stepped into that role for the older teen ministry. I'm grateful for it, and I know Amy and I are looking forward to being taken care of by them. This does also mean, what am going to do? With my schedule, I really can not get together with any teen in our ministry. My schedule is loaded with Mids and Closes. That means I'll have a night off, but it would be after nine o'clock.
What do we do then? Amy is an incredible teen leader. She: loves the young women in our ministry, encourages them, spends time with them doing what ever teens do and then has the ability to relate to them during their studies. Myself: I have been a teen leader and love the being able to shape and mold young hearts for God. I literally can't do that with my schedule as it, but I would love to. Right now, Amy and I wonder if we made a mistake with my career. There were two shifts with OC's Open or Close. As the opener: you came in, did your thing, touched base with the closer and left for the day. As the closer: you have almost the day for yourself, go in, touch base with the opener and do your thing.
I felt productive then, I had time to hang out with some one and then I worked my friends wouldn't necessarily miss me. Now, I rush to work and rush home. I sleep and do it all again the next day. I want to honor God with my life, right now, I'm surviving to keep up my spiritual well being. I go back and forth about staying with my career or changing it again and going to a nine to five situation. The balance in both of our schedules is welcome, but would I be happy working five straight days a week, trying to get things done at the same time everyone else is, and then to top it all off, having to compete to spend time during the day to get some things done when I should be at work.
Ramble, ramble, ramble...
