Moving on or starting over?

This is the first weekend that Dean’s working on tech team with me longer being on the “team.”  I put in my resignation weeks ago, after at least 6 months of debating with myself over it.   He’s still deciding if he’s going to serve on the team without me.  It’s always been something we did together, since before we had kids.  We  starting serving on tech team over a decade ago, in 2000. I remember going to church the morning we got the first positive pregnancy test for Caleb’s pregnancy and serving and telling everyone on the team we were pregnant, before we even told family.   I can remember that like it was yesterday.

I remember that I stopped serving the month before Caleb was born in 2001 because I kept being put on bedrest.   After he was born we moved to Baltimore and I didn’t serve on tech team  again til 2007.   Coming “home” was bittersweet.   Many of the same folks we served with were and are still on the team.   New members joined, ironically, who also recently moved from Maryland.  Ironically they’ve also stopped serving on tech as well, for completely different reasons that my own.

I loved learning all the roles on tech team, and wanted to learn more.  Somehow I thought having been on the team for so long would mean more than it did.  That eventually I’d do more than just show up every week, that maybe my opinion would matter and maybe I would feel like what I did mattered to more than just me.   Sadly, year after year, nothing changed.  I always thought one day I’d train to be a director, but despite mentioning it many times, it didn’t happen.  These last few months, I realized I don’t think I’d ever move on from just a once a month volunteer.    I realized without the ability to do more, I  was wasting my time and skills.  I could be serving in another role with the ability to lead one day, and feel like I was doing something important, other than filling a chair every weekend.

I feel like I’ve been fighting to find my place in the big VCC world, and keep coming up with dead ends.   In the last few weeks, I’ve mentioned to Dean that I want to look for a new church.  I feel like there’s just not anything here for me.   That no one, other than those in our small group, even acknowledges all we’ve done and the fact we’ve been around for so long.  I guess the point is, I was looking to men (and women) to validate my feelings.

Tonight, there was a guest speaker who nailed so much of what I was thinking and reminded me that it wasn’t about other people or even what choices I have to make now, other than the one that chooses to serve God and only God.  I’ve tried so hard to serve others and do what I thought was what I was supposed to do, none of it fulfilled me.   All I’ve gone through in the last year has made me doubt God and his faithfulness and even his prescence in my life.   Like Tim said, number one warning sign that there’s a  problem is “when greater battles are fought within than without.”

I’ve been fighting the internal battle of what to do next in my life.  Trying to figure out how I felt and feeling alone through it all, save for the all out crying conversations I’ve had with Dean.   It’s been a really hard year, I’ve tried to ignore all that has happened and life just keeps piling more and more on our plates.  It’s hard to move on when you haven’t gotten over the past.

I think for now, I need to take time to really need to let go of all I’m trying to do on my own and try to serve the only one that matters, God.   Maybe then and then only, I’ll find the fulfillment I’ve been seeking through the approval and praise of others.

I need to move on, but really I knew leaving tech team was about starting over.  A chapter that started so many years ago is ending, and just like how I feel with the kids not needing me now that they’ll be in school all day, I feel lost.  Who I am if I’m not serving on tech?  Who am I if I”m not serving in small groups?  If I’m not serving in these ways, what will God have for me and how do I figure out what to do next?

It’s all about the choices, and for now, all I’m choosing to do is lean into my loving Father God to hold me and guide me to what’s next.   I’m ready to start over, as scary as that is.   Starting over because I’m ready to move on.