Learning and Re-learning

One of our student ministry team members decided to leave our church this week.  It was her decision to make, and I'm beginning to see that it was the right one.  She was a piece of God's puzzle that looked like she would fit, but in the end realized that the fit wasn't quite right, and there would be another place God could put her where she could make the picture He is making in this world a more beautiful one.

And while that sounds so level-headed, it's a realization that was brought to me from an unexpected place.

My initial reaction was something more along the lines of "well that blows".  I was sitting in the parking lot of SuperCuts (which you should never go to unless you know that the person cutting your hair actually knows what they are doing...I hate to admit it, but salons are actually worth the money) when I talked to her; she had wanted to have a face-to-face conversation, but I had been out with a student and wasn't going back to the church that day.  I remember stumbling through a vague "I understand...I know you put a lot of prayer into this decision..." then went in to get my split ends chopped off with a numb heart.  My kids, these students that I have grown to love as if they really were my own kids, have gone through their share of staff turnover.  It's sadly just part of the territory when it comes to youth ministry.  But that doesn't stop the pain, the "why does everyone leave us" mentality, the questions of what or who is coming next.  So that night, I was just sad.  Sad for my co-worker, that she was going through all this as a newlywed and recent college grad.  Sad for my kids, who were losing someone that they had really come to care about.  Sad for me, because I have had to go through a few transitions myself.  Sad for my boss, our student ministries director, because he had already been having a really crappy week before all this went down.

After cycling through anger, faith, more sadness, disappointment, more anger and lots of prayer, it came time to tell the students.  First the high school leaders that help with the middle school students, then the middle school students (whom she worked most closely with), then the high school students.  As we sat around in a smelly  room (they're all kinda smelly, just part of the charm of the student chapel) with the high school leaders, I braced myself for a reaction that would make Armageddon look light and fluffy.  At first, they just listened, then God spoke through a most unexpected place.  An 11th grade boy.  He said something along the lines of this:

"You know, we've had people come and go and we normally get all upset and negative about it.  But I think we need to be positive and see that this is just how God works.  God put them in our lives so that He could teach us something through them and now He's going to use them somewhere else."

God has funny ways of getting my attention sometimes.

Because the consistent thing that I've been learning and re-learning over the past couple of months is that I do not get to (or need to) pre-approve of God's plans before He does what He's going to do.  My plans are not His, I am not in charge of my life, His idea of how I should live my life will always far surpass my own ideas...the same thing, over and over.  It's like when you try to pound a nail into dense wood - you've got to hit that nail pretty hard and several times over before it sinks in.  Maybe I'm just dense wood.

But that's the beautiful thing about God's love - He never gives up on me.  No matter how many times He needs to remind me of His truth, no matter how many times I am given up on by myself or others, He's always there.  Now that's something worth being reminded of.  What do you need reminded of today?